


Silkworm

by Bastet5



Series: The Wild Hunt [20]
Category: FBI: Most Wanted (TV 2020)
Genre: Espionage, FBI, Gen, Jess gets shot, Major Character Injury, Manhunt - Freeform, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Trigger Warnings, mentions of suicide/suicide attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26150800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bastet5/pseuds/Bastet5
Summary: February 2020The Fugitive Task Force finds itself on the hunt for FBI counter-intelligence agent, guilty of espionage.Kateri's first mission back after the injuries that nearly killed her becomes a hunt with twists and turns and hidden dangers, all for a man who proves himself to be one of the craftiest men the team has hunted.Yet, everyone has a weakness.But what is Hayden's?
Relationships: Clinton Skye & Original Female Character(s), Jess LaCroix & Clinton Skye
Series: The Wild Hunt [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678864
Comments: 23
Kudos: 10





	1. Sunday, February 23: Day 1 (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that this is getting so posted late in the day. I had lots of homework to do and a massive quiz to study before.
> 
> Chapter 1 turned into a monster so I divided it in half.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentions of suicide attempts and methods of suicide (relating to Paul Hayden).

By some stroke of fortune, despite the team not being off rotation after the ICE debacle, no new cases came in for over almost two weeks after the Kane case ended. Kateri was glad of the break for her own mental health and was sure that Jess, at least, was, too, for Tali’s sake. Kateri was somewhat used to her life being upended temporarily on unexpected occasions, and even being held by ICE was not an unknown experience— _unfortunately—_ though one that always took some time to recover from _. Twice is twice too many._ Life working for the FBI, especially when you served in Organized Crime or helped hunt down some of the scum of the earth with the Fugitive Task Force, was not all sunshine and roses and puppy dogs and 9-5 days, as Barnes had said once. Kateri was used to those sorts of things going wrong, but for Tali … a protected little girl … it was much more of a shock and an unsettling, nightmare-inducing scenario.

As much as Kateri had been looking forward to the cessation of her injury leave and her return to work … before the ICE debacle had occurred and thrown a monkey-wrench into the saga that was her life … she was glad for the extra two-ish weeks of break from cases. The break gave time for those old memories and instincts that had reared their ugly heads again to fade away back into the shadows. _Waiting for the next time, I’d say, if I wanted to be pessimistic._ A longer break between cases meant more time for training and continuing to rebuild her stamina that had greatly suffered under … _my restrictions on like everything when it seemed like half the left side of my ribcage was smashed … broken … Come on, don’t exaggerate_.

Running several miles at a time before November 23, 2019, had been easy … _when the weather wasn’t terrible and I wasn’t as likely to break an ankle in slop or freeze from the inside out in the cold as finish my run_. Kateri had been quite proud of her level of psychical fitness, which had made her very active, very physically strenuous job easier to complete. Yet, when she had first been allowed to return to exercising, jogging around her apartment complex had seemed like an accomplishment. _And wasn’t that a hit to my pride_. With physical therapy, continued exercise and training, and a lot of patience, Kateri had watched her strength and stamina slowly return … _though not as fast as I’d like_ , but she still was not sure if those levels had yet reached pre-November 22 levels.

_Can't rebuilt years of stamina and strength in a month-and-a-half after a month-and-a-half of barely being able to do anything._

Kateri had enough medical training to expect that she wouldn’t be in the same condition after being released from broken-rib restrictions as she was before she had gotten shot. _I just wasn’t expecting it to be quite this bad_. After weeks of training, things were much improved, and …

_At this point, it’s going to be what it’s going to be._

_I’ve been cleared for active duty._

_Not running marathons, but running … literally … to the shops or to the bakery is no longer beyond me._

_But for now, if we get a rabbit who wants to imitate a Greyhound, he’ll be someone else’s problem. Not mine_.

The longer break between cases also meant more time for sparring practice and CQB[1] practice. One problem that Kateri had not accounted for originally when she had first returned to exercise, sparring, and more and more time spent in crowded spots was the instincts that _having half the left side of my ribcage smashed … broken … whatever_ had ingrained in her even in two months-ish. Broken ribs hurt a lot. _Like a bloody lot_. They hurt when she breathed, when she sat up, when she lay down, when she stood up, when she moved … _Did I mention they felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest with a bloody knife when I bloody breathed?_ If something bumped them, her ribs hurt even worse. That meant that it had quickly become instinct to guard her left side, and those instincts had carried over unwittingly even after her ribs had healed.

_Instincts like that form quickly …_

Not least of all that Kateri’s new, unwittingly ingrained instincts had her reacting instinctively to protect her once-broken ribs that were no longer broken and no longer need protecting in the same way. _The first time I sparred with Kenny was … frankly, well … a disaster … For a lot of reasons_. When sparring, trying to over-defend one side— _I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first_ —meant that Kateri had been leaving her other side much more exposed and advertising a tell as loudly as if she’d shouted to the rooftops, “I’ve got a weak spot. Come kick me!”

 _That’s been fun to train myself out of_.

_I’m getting much better._

_Gotta keep working at it_.

 _At least, I’m improving_.

_This is why I’m glad I don’t go it alone anymore. If there’s trouble, I’ve got backup and a partner at my back._

_Don’t think I’ll be let out of someone’s sight for a while out in the field. Overprotective, they’re probably going to be, a wee bit._ The final thought was fond. She knew how much her nearly kicking the bucket had affected everyone, and Kateri didn’t begrudge them their overprotectiveness. _Kinda sweet, actually_.

* * *

One advantage of being on injury leave— _after I got back to my place_ —was that, since Kateri wasn’t being called in for work at odd hours on odd days and wasn’t absent from her place for a week or more at a time, attending mass regularly became less of a challenge, which she was very glad for. On this Sunday, February 23, Kateri was just climbing from her truck after returning to her apartment from morning mass when her phone began to buzz in the pocket of her dress pants.

 _Three guesses and two don’t count of who it was_.

Transferring her fresh cup of coffee to the other hand, Kateri pulled out her cellphone and thumbed it open. _I love having fingerprint recognition … most of the time_. There was a new text notification, and tapping open her texting app, she saw, as expected, a new text waiting from Jess. She was looking forward to getting back to work. The necessity of her job was, however, regrettable. As she sometimes put it, “I have a job because bad people do really bad things.”

_We’ve got a case._

_And another really bad one._

_Okaaaayyyy._

_A manhunt … of one of our own._

_Bloody h**l._

_For what? I’m guessing that’s being saved for the briefing._

_Get to HQ in a hurry._

_Uh, yeaaaaaaa_.

 _This’ll be fun_.

The last thought was tinged with dripping sarcasm. Kateri locked her truck quickly and hurried inside. She needed to change quickly before she headed back out. Back inside her apartment, Kateri deposited her coffee mug on her desk in the living room, kicked off her heels— _my feet are thankful. I hate heels_ —and padded in stocking feet diagonally across the room into her bedroom. Fancy clothes were quickly shucked and hung up, _because if I don’t hang up, they’re wrinkle, and I hate ironing—_ and Kateri started to redress in her work clothes that were piled neatly on the bench by her closet, _just waiting for my return to work_. She paused for a second before buttoning up her shirt, fingers tracing over the two new-ish, long, puckered scars that now decorated her side and abdomen.

_You really did almost kick the bucket, Kateri._

_Surviving that took a couple more of those nine lives Billy always says I’ve got._

_Let’s not run the counter any lower on this mission, shall we?_

_No more getting shot or scaring your father … partner … half to death on this mission_.

 _Gotta remember, Kateri. On duty, at work, you’re partners and friends, no change from before_.

Given the adoption papers working their way through the court system, that was going to be a little harder than Kateri had previously thought … _before three days ago, but we’ll figure it out._ Even just thinking about those papers still brought a smile to her face.

This mission, which sounded like it was going to be an interesting one— _in the less than desirable sense of the term_ —was not only going to be her first back since her near-life ending injury but also her first one back since her relationship with her partner had gotten revamped. _Especially considering three days ago._ Kateri still was not completely sure how they were going to be getting around the nepotism laws, but she wasn’t inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying went. _We’ll keep our heads down. We’ll keep things professional as before at work, which means we’re as much of a team slash family as we were before._

There were major advantages for working in a Fugitive Response Team and under Jess LaCroix. _We don’t have to be quite so by the rule book on some things as we do if we were up in the JOC_. _Yeaa, their AC would be nice someday, but I like my job_.

 _Right now, it would be the heating, but the point still stands_.

Finishing dressing in a hurry, Kateri doubled-checked that she had everything in her go-bag— _better to find out now than later if I’ve forgotten something_ ; grabbed an extra soda bottle from her fridge to drink later … _once I have consumed my coffee_ ; adjusted her heating … _because there’s no bloody point to heating this place to I’m-going-to-be-inside-all-day-and-want-to-be-comfy temps, if I’m not here to enjoy it. No reason to run up my bill … cost of living’s bad enough in New York City …_ and then headed out the door.

_Time to get back to work!_

_First case back_.

* * *

Aside from her brief trip to HQ to get her things after the ICE debacle, Kateri hadn’t been at HQ since the beginning of the November case that had nearly killed her. When she met up with the others to do various things, it was all outside of work. Even her sparring sessions with Kenny had taken place elsewhere. Thus, it almost seemed a little bit like déjà vu back to her first day with the team when Kateri pulled her truck into one of her usual parking spots a stone’s throw from the door to the team’s meeting room.

_Okay, there’s Kenny’s jeep and Hana’s car._

_Don’t think the others are here yet_.

_Not surprised, even though I was a little slower than usual._

_Others have farther to come._

_Barnes’ll prob’ly be here soon._

For a moment as Kateri came through the door, the two didn’t seem to notice her arrival, and for a moment, Kateri just stood in the doorway with what was probably, she thought, a ridiculous, sappy smile on her face, as she soak the whole scene in. Kenny was banging around in the fridge, his back to the door. _Oh, Kenny._ Hana was bent over her keyboard, fingers flying across the keyboard with a clattering of keys, doing something techy. It was just like normal. It was just like old times … _before I nearly died and my life got upended. Nearly didn’t get to see all this again. I missed this. I missed you all_.

A second later, the door squeaked, Kenny emerged from the depths of the fridge, and Hana turned from her screens. _Just like the old days. I’m home_.

A beaming smile crossed Kenny’s face. “Kat!” He crowed, folding whatever was in his hand over on itself and stuffing into his pocket, “You’re back!” With a few long strides he crossed the room and enveloped her in a bear hug.

_I missed seeing you all quite as much while you were off on cases and I was stuck here._

_Missed you a whole bloody lot_.

“Good to be back,” Kateri replied, her voice somewhat muffled into the crook of Kenny’s shoulder. _Very good_. “I missed this.” What exactly she meant by “this” was left open for interpretation, _‘cause it covers a whole bloody lot_.

Hana and Kateri exchanged hugs, and then Kateri headed over to her locker to (A) remind herself of what was actually in her locker at the moment and (B) retrieve a few things before the briefing started … _once the others arrive_. Opening her locker, Kateri was hit with yet another reminder of her pre-getting shot life. Her locker had been in disarray— _entropy had taken over yet again_ —before the Scott Weitzen case in early November, and she had never had time to get around to organizing it for the umpteenth time … _before I got shot_. There were piles of stuff, ammo boxes, papers with various other things sticking out of those piles willy nilly. _Bloody h**l!_

 _Well, better start now once I’ve got my stuff together_.

_Not going to find anything quickly with it like this._

By the time Barnes, Jess, and Clinton had arrived all together— _must have been traffic … yet again. The joys of living in New York!_ —some semblance of order had been returned to Kateri’s locker. She was looking into the depths of her locker at the somewhat ordered stacks— _no more about-to-topple piles, though it needs a bit more work_ —when the door squeaked, announcing the arrival of her missing teammates, and a few seconds later Clinton appeared, setting down his bag on the bench beside her.

“Lose something?” Clinton asked curiously.

_If I had, I probably wouldn’t have known._

_Not with that mess._

Kateri looked over at him and smiled, shaking her head, “No, entropy had taken over some time ago, and I never got a chance to fix it before …” The “I got shot” went unsaid but was quite clear. “Had a few minutes, and I was tired of not being able to find anything or go looking without the whole bloody mess keeling over.”

Clinton nodded and chuckled. He squeezed her shoulder quickly. “It’s good to have you back, kid. It hasn’t been the same without you.

_Hasn’t been the same not being here._

_And so I’ve been told today and the last few weeks._

“Niawen.”

A few minutes later packing was almost finished, and everyone gathered around or, at least, directed their attention towards Hana’s screens, and the briefing begin. _Finally, we can learn why the h**l we’re going after one of our own people. Not that there aren’t bad apples … cough, cough, upstairs, cough, cough, but what the h**l’s happening is what I want to know!_ On the left screen was the most wanted poster for a man named Paul Hayden, whose face, at least to Kateri, looked more suited for a very annoying lawyer than an FBI agent gone bad.

_Wanted for Unlawful Flight, Homicide, and … espionage! Seriously?!!_

_Bloody h**l_.

“The Bureau is freaking out on this one,” Hana began, _Bloody h**l. Know it’s really bad if they’re freaking. Espionage … don’t bloody blame_ , “Paul Hayden, one of our own counter-intelligence agents,”— _Double bloody h**l_ —“was arrested downtown last night on charges of spying for China.”

As she spoke, Hana switched the pictures on the right screen from one of Hayden’s badge and one of him on a street talking on a phone to pictures of a man who had to be the homicide victim: an FBI agent sprawled in the driver’s seat of a Bureau car, the airbags deployed, arms splayed lax in death. _Bloody h**l. What drives a man to do all that?_ There was also a photo of another agent sprawled against a window, blood staining her face and the glass behind her. _Bloody h**l. That’s bad. Must have got shot in the head. D**n!_

Hana was still talking, “He escaped, left one agent dead of unknown causes and another agent in the hospital.”

_Bloody h**l! The one that looks like she got in the head … she survived? Bloody h**l, and God have mercy!_

_I get sick and tired of some things in America some days, yea sure, but the worst I’d do is shake the dust off my feet and go back to Canada_.

Kenny rose to his feet from his seat at the conference table. “What he’d do for the Chinese?” He asked, what seemed to be a note of puzzlement in his voice.

 _Good question_.

Kateri sidestepped to allow her partner to get past her to get a closer look at the screens. _You stopped in the walking path again. Need to break yourself of that habit_. (She’d been telling herself that for years but still hadn’t managed to do it yet.) She studied the pictures, her gaze going back and forth between the pictures of the car and the poster of Hayden. _Doesn’t look like a traitor. Though … what does a traitor look like? Devil’s horns? Looks like a suburban lawyer. Traitors don’t go around with glowing neon signs on their foreheads advertising their duplicity_.

“He gave intel on our investigations on their spies here,” Hana replied, “The Chinese were able to pull their people before we could arrest them.”

_Bloody h**l! That’s bad. That’s really, really bad._

_There’s espionage, and then there’s espionage._

_And Hayden just dug himself into a very deep, very dark hole_.

“There’s got to be more to it to justify a five-million-dollar reward,” Jess commented, coming around from his place at the head of the table to a place about an arm’s length from Kateri.

_Yeaaaaa, noticed that._

_That’s some reward._

_Don’t think I’ve ever seen one even close to that in five years_.

“Hayden, he broke some big case a few years ago, right?” Clinton asked, glancing over at Hana.

_He did?_ _Not sure I've ever heard of him.  
_

_How many years ago is a few by your definition?_

_Was I here or still upstairs?_

Hana nodded, “He ran the team that caught the Russian spy Alexi Veronski twelve years ago.”

_Okay, I think you need to adjust your definition of a ‘few,’ Rak … partner. At work, partner. You slip mentally, you could slip verbally._

_No wonder I’ve never heard of Hayden._

_What was I even doing 12 years ago?_

_I would have been 21, so … depending on when in the year it was … prob’ly would have been about to or had just graduated college_.

“From patriot to traitor in twelve years,” noted Barnes, who had moved up on Kateri’s other side, looking up at the screens and then swiveling to look around Kateri at the boss, “That’s a long fall from grace.”

_That’s for bloody sure._

_The question I want to know is why_.

_What drove him to it?_

_Is it one of the usual candidates for why people doing stupid things? Money, sex, power, or some combination thereof?_

“Probably fueled by money problems, ego, bad habits that the Chinese used to blackmail him,” Jess mused, his thinking face on, his gaze fixed on the screens. After a moment of silence and a very fixed look at one particular picture, he moved around Clinton so he was closer to the rightmost screen, “What’s that on his jacket? Vomit?”

“Bingo,” Hana replied, “Agent Irving turned the corner, and thirty seconds later he was dead.”

_Okay, who poisoned him and with what and how?_

_One of the few ways you’re fine one minute and dead the next._

_Doesn’t look like he died of an aneurysm or a brain hemorrhage or something, and those kill you quickly, too_.

“Get me toxicology on him and that coffee mug right there,” Jess instructed, “Who’s the lead agent in Counter-Intel?”

 _Have I ever worked with them? Don’t think so_.

_Ah, something new every day, I guess._

Hana gave a few especially plinky taps on her screen. _Need to trim your fingernails?_ “Ken Brown,” she answered a moment later, “He was Hayden’s partner until eight years ago.”

_Ouch, talk about a partner going rotten._

_And I thought I had it bad with Thomas_.

“That’s got to be tough for that guy,” noted Kenny.

 _No bloody kidding_.

“Got to be tough for everybody at Counter-Intel,” Jess corrected, “The best morale boost we can give them is catching Hayden yesterday.”

With that, the briefing was at end. All that was left for Jess to distribute assignments, and then they all could get to work. The assignments were typical and each suited to the skillsets of those to whom they were assigned. Jess and Barnes were going to the hospital— _Bellevue, what another blast from the past_ —to speak with Agent Brown and check on the condition of the injured agent. Kenny and Hana had their usual leads to chase down: financials, phone records, security footage, tech, etc. Kateri was to get in contact with her people and start putting out extra feelers … _a little extra manpower in the search for Hayden won’t hurt_. Clinton would help Kenny and Hana for now … _unless I need a ride … or a bodyguard_.

“Do you just need to make calls for now? Or do you need a ride?” Clinton asked Kateri, coming back over to her side once Jess and Barnes had departed.

Kateri made a face, thinking for a second, mentally weighing the time cost of contacting her different informants with the breadth of coverage each would potentially provide. “Just calls for now.” _Some of my contacts can put out the word to others I don’t know. That’ll get a good web covering the city and save me from having to talk to a few time-consuming, difficult people and some who don’t know me as me_.

* * *

Making sure her bag was out of the walking path, Kateri left her partner and her other two teammates to work inside in peace and stepped outside. She returned to her truck and, opening the tail, settled down on it cross-legged, placing her copy of the intel packet beside her.

_Okay, get a picture of Hayden from the wanted poster and one from normal life._

She snapped a picture of it quickly with her work phone.

_Okay, send it to my burner so I can distribute it._

_Done._

_Okay. Who to call first …_

Pulling out her burner and double-checking the picture had arrived as expected, Kateri then punched in the familiar number for Billy and pressed the phone to her ear.

A few ring’s later, the call connected, and a familiar voice answered, “Mornin’, chica.” A high amount of background noise filtered through the speaker, voices and music and … _car noises?_ … among other things.

_You’ve been calling me that for over a decade-and-a-half._

_Not sure it fits anymore._

_‘Least it’s better than that old awful nickname you used to call me._

“Morning to you, too, Billy,” Kateri replied, indulging herself by rolling her eyes heavenward in annoyance, “You someplace safe to talk?”

There were footsteps, and the background noises decreased significantly within seconds, “Safe from my boys or from other prying ears?”

“The latter.”

_Of course._

_Have I ever come to you alone with stuff the rest of the Crew can’t know?_

_They all know who I am for heaven’s sake._

_Not like a lot of my other contacts._

_You don’t know everything anyway, and they can be useful._

“Yes, then. What’s up?”

Kateri pulled her phone away from her ear just long enough to hit send on the text with the pictures of Hayden that she had already had primed. “Just sent you a text.”

“Got it,” Billy said a few seconds later. There was a long pause as he probably studied the photographs, Kateri assumed. “Looks like a very useless, annoying lawyer. What’s he to you?”

_That’s almost exactly what I thought._

_I’d say great minds think alike but …_

“My target,” Kateri replied, tamping down hard on the threat of amusement that had entered her voice after Billy’s first comment, “My team just got assigned to find him.”

_You never were fond of lawyers._

_Unsurprisingly._

_I’m not fond of lawyers, either, with one or two exceptions._

“Andddddddddddddd?” Billy dragged the word out into several times as many syllables as it was supposed to have according to the dictionary.

“He’s one of mine, Billy,” Kateri’s tone was deadly serious, “He’s FBI, a bad apple gone so rotten he’s only slime. The Bureau wants to find him. There’s a huge reward on him, and I mean huge.”

“Oooohhhh, I see where this is going,” a hint of glee entered Billy’s voice. _Sometimes you are extremely disturbing_ , “You want help finding him. You want him dead or alive?”

 _Oh, for heaven’s sake_.

“Alive, Billy,” Kateri snapped, “I want you to spread that photo out to everyone you know. Usual deal applies. I’ll owe you or them a favor if said favor doesn’t break any laws. And we want Hayden ALIVE. If the NYPD or the Feds fish him out of a bog or the Hudson River in the near future, you’re first on my list of who I’m coming after, and trust me, Billy, I will find you, and our shared history won’t save you.”

“Yea, yea, yea,” Billy drawled carelessly, “You’ve been sayin’ that for years,”— _and I actually mean it whether or not you believe that_ —“What’d he do to get the Feebees all hot and bothered?”

“Espionage. Can’t say more than that.”

Billy abruptly sobered at that, “Got it. I’ll spread the word this afternoon. Dude’s from New York?”

“Metro area,” _Not giving him more details than that_ , “Captured in Manhattan last night before he escaped. He’s on the run. Just watch your back, Billy. This guy’s dangerous, and he’s got dangerous allies. Try to help me find him, but don’t be obvious about it.”

“I know the drill, chica. Trust me.”

_That’s the problem._

_I have to_.

With those final words, Billy hung up, and Kateri was left in silence, grumbling under her breath. _However much you help me, sometimes I really, really, really want to punch you. How you can go from friendly to a pain in my rear to deadly serious in the space of a few minutes amazes me. You could have been so much more than this._ Kateri shook her head sadly, as she cued up her next text, and then started dialing the next number.

Soft Middle-Eastern music and a low hum of voices met her ear when the call connected, but no voice answered … as usual.

“Sabah Elkher,” Kateri began, “Enta amel eih?“[2]

“Kways,” a male voice only then answered, “We enti?”[3]

“Kwaysa,” Kateri replied. _And that is basically the limits of my Arabic save for a couple other phrases. Thankfully, don’t need more than this for how we do things_. “Are you some place quiet you can talk?”

“One moment,” Hasaan answered.

Hasaan, who had helped Kateri before during the Cleo Wilkins case, owned a Middle Eastern restaurant in the Bronx, and the back and forth in Arabic was how the two always did things. Hasaan always opened in Arabic if things were normal. If there was a problem or it wasn’t safe for him to talk, he spoke in English. Like Hasaan did, Kateri would open with Arabic if she could talk or would reply in English if she could not.

“What can I do for you, my friend?” Hasaan asked a few moments later. The only sounds aside from his voice that Kateri could hear was his own soft breaths. The music had faded away along with the voices.

Kateri sent him a text and repeated the same explanations as earlier. Hasaan promised to spread the word and the photo quietly among everyone he knew, and then Kateri ended the call. The same cycle repeated and repeated and repeated as she went down the list of contacts who knew who she was and to whom she could speak openly of why she was trying to hunt down a guy wanted by the Feds. Once she finished that list, Kateri got creative and put out word to a couple of people on her other list of people who knew her by an alias.

_Always have to get more creative with them._

_Gotta find a good reason whoever they know me as would be looking for Hayden._

_Aside from the money._

_Considering I have never been a bounty hunter._

_Bloody h**l, the reward on him is a king’s ransom._

* * *

By the time Kateri had finished placing all those calls, she had almost talked herself hoarse after making calls for over an hour. Her thoughts were turning fondly to the soda she had stuck in her bag earlier, as she hopped to the ground and closed the tailgate on her truck. She was just turning to go back inside, files in hands, when she saw Jess and Barnes’ car pull back into the garage.

“How’s the other agent?” _What was her name again?_ Kateri asked once the two had parked and had approached to where Kateri was leaning on her truck.

“Not good,” Barnes shook her head, grimacing, “Fractured skull and brain hemorrhage. She’s on a vent. It’s not looking good.”

 _Bloody h**l_.

Kateri swore, crossing herself quickly on reflex, “Rough. Bullets to the head are a bitch.”

“She wasn’t shot,” Barnes countered, “Agent Brown said Hayden kicked her head through the window.”

_Hayden?_

Kateri’s eyes went wide, and she choked on the words she was about to say. “Hayden?” Her voice rose an octave in pitch. _He went kinetic on her? Doesn’t look like the type. Why? Takes a lot of anger and rage to do that to someone_.

Barnes nodded.

_Definitely doesn't look the type._

“Bloody, bloody h**l. I wouldn’t have pegged him for it, but … that’s adds a new angle to the profile. Pics weren’t the best angle, but I was sure she had been shot from that angle.”

“Did look like it,” Barnes agreed.

* * *

Inside, an impromptu briefing ensued, as Jess and Barnes caught Kateri and the others up on what intel they had learned from Agent Brown at the hospital. The reason the reward for Hayden’s capture was so bloody high was that it was a last-ditch, hail Mary play by Counter-Intel to capture Hayden before he sold his know-how to the Chinese. _Every little bit of. Bloody h**l._ Paul Hayden, Agent Brown had revealed, knew the names of national assets in China, Chinese nationals that were working for the US Government. If those names were leaked to the Chinese, those assets would be dead. _Double bloody h**l, and our work’s crippled._

The consequences for those assets would be worse. Many times worse. They’d be dead …

_But probably not quickly or easily._

_Traitors aren’t looked on kindly._

_Not an end you’d wish on anyone_.

The expectation was that Hayden was going to trade those names for a getaway ticket out of the United States to China. _Well, we can’t let that happen_. The problem was where to find Hayden. Eight years ago, Agent Brown said that Hayden would have been at home or at church, but now he had no idea. _Could use a few more details about what happened eight years ago to cause that change!_

Counter-Intel had been watching Hayden for about a month. They had known that they had a mole because every time a case was started against a known Chinese asset, that spy was called home … _right before we could arrest ‘em. Very suspicious timing_. There were no new faces, and the only common thread in all those cases was Hayden.

“Agent Brown said that even Hayden’s wife Jenny was suspicious,” Jess stated, drawing the updates to a close, “Counter-Intel has cameras inside their house. They caught Jenny searching Hayden’s study and garage. Hana, you should be getting that footage soon.”

Kateri frowned. There were a lot of reasons a wife could be suspicious of her husband’s actions, and _there are a whole lot of reasons I’d put higher on that list than suspecting him of treason. High on most lists would be cheating. I can understand searching the study, but why the garage?_

“Got it!” Said Hana a minute later. She tapped quickly at her screen for another minute and then threw some new footage up onto the screens.

The first footage was of Hayden’s study at his home. The room appeared to be quite large, but only one half of the room could be viewed from the camera’s location in the light fixture. _Always in the light fixture. Hope nobody’s got to change a bulb._ There were two large bookcases on the right of the frame filled with books and other knickknacks; in the center, a fancy, stuffed leather chair and side table; on the left, a large wooden desk. It was the last that a woman was searching in the footage.

“Check the middle desk drawer, honey,” commented Hana loudly as the six agents all sat or stood around the conference table watching the footage.

From her position next to Clinton, Kateri gave a muffled snort of laughter, swiveling long enough to shoot Hana a grin. _I missed this. I missed the snark and the one-liners. Wasn’t the same by myself, even seeing you all off-duty and on weekends and such_.

“They always shut things in the back that they think we’ll never find.”

_Sometimes the most obvious place is the best place to hide things … if people think you’re too smart to hide it there so they don’t look … and sometimes the worst!_

“It is interesting where she’s not looking,” Jess commented, a slight smirk pulling up the corners of his mouth, “The place you might hide a document or phone numbers.”

_Is upstairs sure that the wife’s suspicious about the up-to-know-good angle, not other funny business?_

Hana’s tablet beeped, and attentions switched from the footage to the tech genius. “Tox results on Agent Irving: death by cyanide poisoning,”— _ouch. Not a nice way to go. ‘Least it was quick_ —“Cyanide was also found in his coffee mug.” _Okaaaaayyyyyyyy. How the h**l’d someone get cyanide in his coffee mug without him noticing? And who got it in there?_

The footage was still playing and had switched to the wife’s search of the garage. Kateri turned one eye back to the footage, while keeping the rest of her attention on the discussion.

“The report said that there was a scuffle between Irving and Hayden when they put him in his car. Maybe that’s when he slipped it into his coffee.”

_Still think that’d be noticeable._

_But I wasn’t there._

_All depends on the kinda scuffle_.

“And Hayden just happened to have a vial of cyanide on him?” Asked Hana puzzled.

_Good point._

_Stuff’s not easy to get a hold of._

_I could probably find some in the underground through my contacts._

_Wouldn’t be easy or cheap, though._

_Stuff’s nasty._

“Good point,” acknowledged Kateri, speaking for the first time in a while, “Unless he has a fondness for peaches and apricots and has a bag of fruit stones stashed away,[4] cyanide’s not just something you pick up off a random street corner.”

“Maybe,” Jess responded, seemingly to Hana’s question, not Kateri’s point, “If he thought he was under surveillance, and as you said, Kat, what’s curious is where he got it.”

On the footage, Mrs. Hayden was finishing her stationary perusal of the contents of the crowded garage and started heading straight for the shadowy area behind one box of undetermined contents.

“Cyanide glass capsules are part of the Russian spy craft,” Jess continued, pacing back around the table, returning to his seat at the head, “Maybe he took it from that Russian spy he caught as a trophy of the highlight of his career.”

_Dangerous and creepy kind of trophy._

A few seconds later, Mrs. Hayden pulled out a bag of charcoal. _I recognize the label. Charcoal … oh, bloody h**l!_

“Uhhh, boss,” Kateri prompted, breaking back into the cyanide discussion, “She just found something. Looks like charcoal.”

“She got a problem with barbecue?” Asked Hana as on the footage, Mrs. Hayden dumped the charcoal in a large trashcan.

_Barbecue, nope._

_Suicide, yes_.

“Maybe a problem with carbon monoxide,” corrected the boss.

“If you’re using charcoal for grilling, you don’t stuff the stuff behind a box out of the way where it’s in the shadows not noticeable. And charcoal’s a h**l of a lot less noticeable than drowning yourself in car exhaust fumes,” Kateri added, “… if one feels driven to that point.”

_Also, quieter than shooting yourself, and less messy than that and some … other options._

“I think it’s time we had a chat with Mrs. Hayden,” finished the boss.

* * *

[1] Close-Quarter Battle.

[2] Masri. “Good morning. How are you (M)?”

[3] Masri. “I’m well. And you (F)?”

[4] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide>


	2. Sunday, February 23: Day 1 (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we finally get to the action!

The Hayden’s place was located in Westchester County about an hour north of the city. Kateri and Clinton headed out with Jess and Barnes late morning, leaving Kenny and Hana behind at HQ to work their magic on the different threads they were tracking down. _If this weren’t Sunday, the traffic might be even worse and the drive even longer!_

At first the drive passed in silence as Clinton navigated their way out of the city and out of city traffic. Kateri was content to curl up in her seat in silence, watching the scenery flash by and occasionally glancing back over at her partner. _I missed this_. She had spent a great deal of time with her fa … _partner. You’re on duty. You slip mentally, you might slip verbally_ … and with Jess the last three months. The others hadn’t exactly been strangers either, but it wasn’t the same as all being at work together.

_I missed the jokes, the camaraderie, the time together. They’re my family, not just my job._

_Gave me the willies sometimes, too, watching them go off and knowing I wouldn’t be with them to watch their back and help on the bad cases._

_That last one before the ICE debacle … the multi-state killing spree couple? Bloody h**l, and God have mercy, that was bad_.

“Penny for your thoughts, kid?” Clinton’s voice broke into her thoughts at one-point part way through the drive.

Kateri glanced over at him, her gaze drawn away from the passing trees, branches bare for the winter, “Just thinking about how much I missed all this.”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean the long car rides,” Clinton replied dryly, a thread of mischievous good-humor in his eyes as he glanced over at her for a moment before his gaze returned to the road.

_Our rabbit-trailing conversations, sure._

_Car trips themselves, uhhhh, no._

Kateri laughed, a grin spreading across her face and lighting up her eyes in a smirk, and shook her head, “Whether I missed the car rides would depend on when you asked me. After running around all day and they’re my first chance in a while to sit down, yeaa, I’d miss ‘em. But that wasn’t what I was getting at. I missed you and the others, the camaraderie, the time together. I’ve seen you … and Jess … about as much as normal, but seeing the others from time to time … it was good … but it wasn’t quite the same …”

“As living in each other’s pockets for a week or more on end.” Clinton finished for her.

_Uh, yeaaaaaaa._

“Yeaa,” Kateri replied, thumping her head back against her head rest, “Bloody h**l, I even missed Kenny’s snoring. Can you believe it?” She shook her head wryly, “Couldn’t stand it at first … he snores like a chainsaw. Could barely sleep the first few missions … but I’ve gotten so used to it that it’s been too bloody quiet at the farm, at my place.”

 _Kenny would be amused to hear me say that_.

“I believe it,” Clinton agreed, “We’re used to our routines. I certainly am. It hasn’t been the same without you. I kept catching myself turning to say something to you or scanning for you when I’ve been out in the field. You’ve always been there for the last five years, and then you weren’t. It was like losing my right arm.”

_It’s good to be missed._

_As that sign I saw once said, all who pass through this door bring joy. Some by going out. Some by coming in._

_It’s good to be missed._

“It hasn’t been the same for me either … as you well know from patiently listening to my grumblings on some days.”

* * *

The four agents arrived at the Hayden’s house in Westchester County a little before noon. It was a large Colonial-style house on a long, quiet street that looked well-suited for the old American dream of a fuzzy dog, white-picket fence, and 2.5 kids. _How you have 2 and a half kids I’ve never understood, but the point still stands_. The house screamed suburban and “I’m completely normal,” not “one of my owner’s is a traitor to the USA.” _Maybe that’s the point?_

Mrs. Hayden looked and dressed like a typical suburban, upper-middle class wife. She just was a terrible liar and a terrible fake. “I’m not worried that Paul would hurt himself. Why would you say that?” When confronted with the team’s suspicion about Hayden and a possible suicide attempt, her voice was too fast, her tone too fake and flat, her casualness too forced.

_Nice try, dear. You’re not fooling us with that act._

_I could be blind as a bat and still spot it a mile away._

_You’re not even good enough to fool someone without my undercover experience._

Kateri was very glad that her poker face, at least, had not suffered during her extended injury leave, since _I kinda need it right now_. Barnes and Jess were in the living room next to the front door talking with Mrs. Hayden. Kateri herself had just come back downstairs from looking around with Clinton just in time to hear Mrs. Hayden’s response to the suicide question.

“Counter-Intel surveilled your house,” Barnes responded, turning from her perusal of the fancy fireplace or the bookshelves full of books and knickknacks next to it, “You were seen searching your garage and finding a bag of charcoal.” Her voice was level and matter of fact.

 _The key to lying is not to act too innocent, too surprised, too unaware … well, too … anything_.

_This place … parts of it … kinda look like mine right before I go on a cleaning spree … after entropy’s taken over for just long enough that I can’t stand the chaos anymore._

“He’s tried it before. Isn’t that right?” Jess asked at that point, moving slowly towards the front of the room, pausing to glance at the books and papers piled on the sofa, “Burning charcoal to poison himself with carbon monoxide?”

_I want to die at home in my bed at a ripe old age or go out in a blaze of glory doing something heroic._

_Poisoning myself so I drown in fumes is not a way I want to go out_. _Not a pleasant way either, suffocating, though I could think of worse._

“Yes,” Mrs. Hayden finally admitted, “Five years ago. I found him in the garage.”

Behind Kateri, footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Kateri moved aside automatically so that she wasn’t blocking her partner from coming back downstairs.

“I’m a nurse. I revived him,”— _that would be … freaky. Treating people I don’t know is bad enough. Treating my family … bloody h**l, that’d be bad_ —“He didn’t want to go to the hospital. He was afraid he’d lose his job!” Her voice got fast at the ends, words tripping over themselves as she spoke.

_What the h**l is Bureau policy for that kinda situation? I’ve not idea._

_Hope he’d at least be given some help before they thought of giving him the boot._

“Did he talk about his reasons for the attempt?” Asked Clinton, who stopped besides Kateri, who was leaning her back against the stair rail.

_I was just about to ask that._

_We think alike again_.

“I knew. It was the first anniversary of our son Davey’s death,”— _bloody h**l. That’s terribly hard, but leaving your wife alone to deal with that and your taking the easy way out. Seriously?_ Mrs. Hayden paused and, sinking down into a chair, looked down at a framed picture of a little blond-haired boy that was sitting on the table next to the chair. “He was riding his bicycle in front of the house.”

 _Bloody h**l_. Kateri could fill in the rest of what probably happened mentally.

“We’re very sorry,” stated Barnes for them all. _Yea, we bloody are. No parents should have to deal with that, bury their own kids_.

“Paul loved children,” Mrs. Hayden continued, “He talked about another child, but … I just couldn’t. God took Davey for a purpose. It didn’t seem right to just … replace him.”

_Okay, I understand the sentiment, but your theology … I think … is slightly suspect._

Jess had wandered past Clinton and Kateri out of the living room, and at that point everyone moved downstairs to the study.

“What made you suspect that he might hurt himself again?” Jess asked as he came off the stairs into the study, the others following in his wake.

“Uh, he was distant, staying up nights,” Mrs. Hayden’s voice came from behind Kateri, who was the second to last down the stairs, “I never suspected he was spying.”

The study was large, as was clear from the surveillance footage, with furniture around the edges and the center floor mostly clear. It was large enough and had enough light and vantages out that Kateri didn’t feel discomfited or hemmed in. _Claustrophobia’s a pain to deal with some days. Glad it’s been better recently. Less to trigger it at home … well, except for the ICE debacle, and that took a bit for it and my other issues to calm down over_. Kateri cataloged the obvious contents of the room in a sweeping glance. Furniture, lights, bankers’ boxes of papers, pictures, assorted knickknacks. Normal stuff for an office.

“Any money problems?” Asked Clinton.

_I know what to look for and where to look in the haunts I usually deal with, but … espionage … this is out of my bailiwick._

_Soooooo far out of my wheelhouse._

“Money’s always been tight,” Mrs. Hayden replied, “It comes with the job, right?”— _that’s for bloody sure_ —“Paul always complained that he didn’t get the promotions he deserved.”

_Don’t think Hayden’s dumb enough to leave out incriminating documents or an I’m-going-here-next-after-escaping-my-old-buddies list out on his desk._

_So, what are we looking for?_

“We heard he wasn’t happy with his reassignment to the East Asia section?” Prompted Barnes.

_Could be in it for the money. We aren’t exactly paid cushy salaries, ‘specially if you have a family to care for._

_Could be blackmail. I’d wanna know about any threatening or even weird phone calls, emails, texts. Anything that came at odd hours. Anything that seemed to put him on edge._

“He said that it felt like punishment,” Mrs. Hayden replied.

 _Interesting_. _Wonder why._

 _Could just be dissatisfaction with the government or a bone to pick over perceived injustices_.

_A bone to pick with the Bureau._

Jess turned to Hayden’s desk to start putting together his goodie box— _sometimes you’re a bit like Sherlock Holmes, boss, putting together so much from little clues_ —and Clinton and Kateri started looking through the papers on the table by the stairs. Nothing appeared immediately striking or noteworthy. _Just normal papers, newspapers clippings about his old cases, ‘specially the Russian thing, though that’s different. Trophies? Plaques, etc._

“Did he feel undervalued?” Asked Jess, “Especially after the success of the whole Russia thing.”

“That case was like a curse,” Mrs. Hayden replied forcefully, pointing toward the boxes Clinton and Kateri were looking through, “He filled those boxes with clippings about it. Paul got the Director’s Award and a meeting with the Vice President,”— _Woweeeeee_ —“He still struggled to pay the mortgage.” _Ouch_.

_Anywhere near the city’s not exactly great for cost of living._

The conversation veered off to some fancy ring Jess had found on Hayden’s desk, but then Clinton found something interesting: a business card for a church in Queens … with Chinese hand-writing on it. _Okay. Bit suspicious._ Clinton looked at Kateri, and she looked back at him. “This is interesting,” her face read. He nodded and pushed himself to his feet.

_Chinese church … Chinese handwriting … Spy for Chinese._

_Interesting string of coincidences or something more?_

“Here’s a card from a Chinese church. St. James in Flushing,” Clinton broke into the conversation at that point, “It’s got Chinese handwriting.”

 _Just looks like very pretty squiggles to me_.

Jess came over, and Clinton handed the card to him. The boss studied it for a moment and then looked over at Mrs. Hayden. “You ever attend this church, Ms. Hayden?”

“No,” She shook her head.

_Interesting._

* * *

Kateri and the others finished up quickly at the Hayden residence and then headed out. After buying lunch quickly to eat in the cars, they returned to New York City. The next stop for the day was this St. James Church in Flushing, Queens to discover why Hayden had a business card from it and whose handwriting was on it and what the writing actually said. _Could just send a pic to Kenny, I suppose, but we’ll figure out one way or the other, and this way we won’t distract him … from whatever he’s doing at the moment_.

The interior of the church was dark but nice with old-style wooden pews and stained-glass windows that shed interesting reflections across the floor in the early afternoon light. _I love stained glass._ A man in a priest’s habit, who introduced himself as Father Allan, met the agents as they entered.

“It’s the name of our custodian, Ji Yong Fei,” the priest replied instantly when showed the business card, making his way up the aisle to the front of the church, “but I don’t think it’s his handwriting.”

“Could we talk to him?” Asked Clinton, who was a couple steps in front of Kateri.

“Yes,” Father Allan replied, “He’s in the sacristy. He’s been with us five years. The church just sponsored his immigration application.”

 _Interesting_.

The group reached the front of the church and made their way around the altar. As they did so, a young man carrying a mop appeared from the right and started to cross the apse in front of them. His ethnicity totally aside, Ji Yong Fei was the type of person that put Kateri a little on edge. His dress was sloppy, almost slovenly, and the air about him … _he’s just a little weird_. If she had seen him on the street, especially in some areas, she would have wondered if he was on drugs. _Gotta watch him_. Kateri could almost feel herself trying to tense, and she forced herself to relax and stay calm.

“There he is,” said Father Allan, halting just in front of the altar. Kateri and the others stopped behind and next to him. “Yong Fei, these people are here from the FBI. They’d like to talk to you.”

“Okay, okay, I finish,” Yong Fei replied, his English heavily accented, still moving across the apse, probably to put his janitorial equipment away. _Okay, you’re definitely weird_. _Are we going to need a translator?_

Jess started to move left, and Clinton moved to shadow him, and Kateri moved to shadow her partner. Yong Fei had his back to the group and was doing something in an open cabinet-wardrobey thing. _What are you doing, dude? Put down your stuff and come over. You can put it away later_.

“Sir, can you show me your hands and turn around slowly?” Jess asked … or rather instructed … _polite request. Like parents with kids_ , one hand slipping towards his gun.

Kateri let her left-hand drop to her side, mirroring Jess’ movements. Her jacket was unzipped, and she could reach for her Glock in an instant. (She’d done more quick draws than she could count as practice during her ramp-up for her return to work. _One skill that could get me killed if it goes rusty_.)

In an instant, the whole situation went south.

Yong Fei’s right arm went back as if pulling something off his belt, and then he spun, a flash of something in his hand. _Knife, gun?_ (The thought flashed across Kateri’s mind in a split second.) Jess, Kateri, and Clinton all drew, but it was too late. _It’s a gun!_ At almost the same moment, Yong Fei and Jess fired.

The shots rang out, echoing in the small church, a place where no gun fire should ring out.

Both shots connected.

Both men fell.

_Oh, bloody h**l._

_No, no, no, no, no, no, no._

_Not again._

_Not again._

_Not again._

_Not now._

_Not now_.

Jess staggered backwards, half-falling, half-collapsing against the wooden railing. _Bloody h**l, let his vest have worked … better than mine._ Yong Fei dropped in his track, sprawled bonelessly against the nearest wall, a huge bloody spot already blooming on his white t-shirt. _Bloody h**l._ Gut wounds were bad news.

“Jess!” Barnes’ shout of fear echoed loudly in the deathly silence that followed the explosion of gunfire.

Heart in her throat, Kateri moved forward on Clinton’s left side, covering their downed assailant whose gun was still lying within easy reach. The blood stain on Yong Fei’s shirt was only growing as the seconds passed. _Not good. Not good. Not good for either of ‘em. Bloody h**l, I hope we’ve got enough supplies_. Clinton kicked the gun away out of reach.

“Don’t bind him,” Kateri said, switching into Mohawk, fear harshening her tone, “Gotta treat him, or he’ll bleed to death.”[1]

Clinton, roughly but quickly and thoroughly, patted the janitor down, searching for any other hidden weapons that he could use to attack either of them while they were treating him. As soon as he was finished, Kateri holstered her pistol and helped her partner roll the semi-conscious, moaning Yong Fei onto his back after quickly checking for an exit wound and finding done.

_Bloody, bloody h**l._

_Gut shots._

_I hate gut shots for so many bloody reasons_.

“Put pressure on that,” Kateri told her partner, switching back into English, who leaned his weight on the bullet wound that was leaking blood at a very … impressive rate. _The only thing that bleed worse than head wounds and arteries are gut shots._

_Jess’ a good shot. Dropped him._

_But bloody h**l, stomach, liver, intestines, I don’t wanna know what that bullet hit._

_All bleed like h**l. Gotta get this guy to a hospital._

“Father, call 911 right now. Two ambulances ASAP. Agent down, and a guy with a gut wound. Need an OR and a surgeon and a lot of blood standing by,” Kateri snapped as she started pulling QuikClot gauze from her pants’ pockets, “Move your hands.” Clinton did so, and she slipped the gauze over the wound, and then he pressed his weight back down.

_Needs OR._

_Gotta get the bleeding slowed or he won’t make it that far._ Despite the QuikClot and the pressure Clinton was putting on the wound, blood was still leaking out at an impressive rate. _Bloody h**l_. _Hope we’ve got enough supplies_.

Jess, meanwhile, while groaning, moaning, his face almost … grey? … with pain, was back on his feet with Barnes’ assistance. _If he can get up, he’s not that bad off. I couldn’t have gotten up after I got shot_. _Simply breathing was a challenge._

“Boss, are you about to drop dead in the next five minutes?”

_Which of you do I help?_

Jess shook his head, groaning slightly when he coughed, one hand going up to the abused area on his chest, “No, I’ll make it.”

“Can you take a deep breath without feeling like a KBar’s being shoved into your side?”

“Yes, I’ll make it. How’s he?”

“Not good,” Clinton responded for her, “You got him in the gut.”

“Barnes, I need the kit from the car,” Kateri snapped.

Blood was already soaking through the hemostatic gauze Kateri had applied to the wound and on which Clinton was leaning a considerable amount of weight. The problem with abdominal wounds, besides the fact that most bled like stuck pigs, was that you could not pack them … because the bleeders were usually to deep … or put tourniquets on them … because you don’t have a limb to work with them.

_Move quickly and get ‘em to the OR._

_All you can do_.

_That and hope there’s enough blood to refill all they’re leaking out._

Barnes came running back with the first-aid kit within a minute and passed it off. Quickly but not frantically … _don’t panic. Calm. That’s what you need …_ Kateri pulled out more gauze … a lot more gauze … _hemostatic on bottom … regular on top …_ and exchanged the already soaked gauze for fresh gauze, Clinton instinctively pulling back to give her room before leaning his weight back on the wound. The soaked gauze was tossed aside to join the blood already staining the wooden floor. She and her partner had rarely had occasion to do this dance, but their ability to read each other’s minds and moves worked to their advantage here.

Kateri pressed two bloody fingers to Yong Fei’s neck and counted the beats that pulsed underneath her fingertips. _Pulse’s weaker. Slower. Very not good._ She tapped his cheek with one bloody finger, trying to get his attention. His eyes roamed restlessly but did not seem to be seeing much, though his gaze moved towards her when she tapped his cheek or called his name. _Confused mental state. Decreased breathing rate. Probably internal bleeding as well as external. Gotta assume. At least, Class II shock by now, I’d guess_.[2] Some fancy, more technical medical stuff, Kateri didn’t know, but she had a lot of experience with gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and bleeders. _You got med training, you can patch yourself up and those you’re workin’ for or under, fellow agents and crooks alike_. She knew the signs of hemorrhagic shock quite well, unfortunately.

Distantly, the sound of sirens started to ring out in the afternoon air. _‘Bout bloody time._

“How you doin’, Jess?” Clinton asked as the sirens grew louder.

“Still breathing. Hurts like a bitch, though,” Jess replied. He had moved to lean against the wooden railing that ran around behind the altar.

_Bloody believe it!_

_You’re talkin’ and still on your feet. Good signs._

The ambulances … with police for backup … arrived within minutes … with extra know-how and supplies that were badly needed. The paramedics stabilized Yong Fei as best they could— _they can’t give him IVs for fluids. I know how to insert an IV. Not allowed to, though. Don’t have supplies anyway_ —and both injured men were loaded up for transport, Barnes going with Jess.

“What hospital?” Kateri asked as the paramedic on Jess’ ambulance closed the back doors and started to move towards the driver’s seat.

“New York-Presbyterian.”

The police locked down the scene, and Clinton put in a call to ERT while Kateri washed up hurriedly in the bathroom— _go into the hospital all this blood on us, and the nurses’ll think we’re the patients. Bloody h**l, we’d get attention so fast our heads’d spin with this much blood_ —and then they switched places while she gathered up what was left of their supplies. _Gotta restock again. Went through a ton of gauze_.

Out by the car— _someone from HQ’ll have to take the other back_ —Kateri realized her hands were shaking as the adrenaline wore off. _Could’ve done without this on the first case back_. Dealing with all the blood and Jess’ shot to the vest were both too close to before. _I’ll call Kenny and Hana on the way to the hospital._ About two minutes after she’d come outside for air, Clinton also emerged. He looked about as shaken as Kateri felt. _First Angelyne years ago. Then me almost. Now almost Jess!_

Clinton wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. For a minute Kateri was content to bury her face in the crook of her father’s neck and just breathe. _In and out. In and out. Jess’ll be okay. Just blood._ Out here with nobody watching non-team, they didn’t have to be professional.

“You going to be okay?” She asked finally. _Not dumb enough to ask if you are okay. I know the answer to that question. A big, fat “no!”_

“Once I know Jess’ okay,” there was a slight shake to her father’s voice. _Too close to November_.

The Skyes had already lost Angelyne. _Jess’d better be alright._

* * *

On the way to the hospital a few minutes’ later, Kateri had to call and update Kenny and Hana, a call that she was not looking forward to making … _even though Jess wasn’t bad off when I last saw him_. As she well knew, that did not mean that things couldn’t still go bad. A shot to the vest could cause internal bleeding or rib injuries or a pneumothorax that did not present immediately. _Or … Shut up, brain. Not a productive line of thought._ You could be walking and talking one minute and down on a gurney a couple minutes later. _Really not productive or useful. Docs are good there. Jess’ll be fine. Just shut up, medic brain_.

“Crosby,” Kenny’s voice was distracted as he answered the phone after several rings. _Must not be looking at your caller ID_.

“Hey, Kenny. You and Hana still at HQ?” Kateri was proud that her voice was not as shaky as she still felt. Shootings she could usually shake off, but when one of their own went down … _‘specially one I know_ … _it’s a h**l of a lot different!_

“Mm-hmm. What do you need? You find the guy you were looking for in Queens?”

“Yes, but …” Kateri took a deep breath, pushed through, forced the words out because she could hesitate longer, “shots were fired. He and the boss were both shot.”

“What?!” Kenny’s shout rang out, and Kateri jerked the phone away from her ear.

_I understand the reaction._

_You’ll make me deaf before I’m 35, though, if you’re not careful_.

“Caught Jess in the vest. Thinks he’s okay. Only a 32, but he could have some cracked ribs.”

Kenny swore lustily and liberally, “The vic still alive?”

“He was when the paramedics arrived, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig. Jess’ shooting’s good. Caught him in the gut. Both were being taken to New York-Presbyterian.”

“We’ll meet you there.”

With that Kenny hung up abruptly, and Kateri slipped her phone back into her pocket and thunked her head back against her head rest. “Bloody h**l,” she swore softly, “Wasn’t expecting first day back to go like this.”

* * *

New York-Presbyterian was one of the best hospitals in New York City and also one of the city’s Level 1 Trauma Centers … _like Bellevue_.[3] It was also a very busy hospitals with many, many, many patients to treat upstairs and in the ER, and unless you were (A) having a heart attack, (B) puking your guts out, (C) risking spreading something highly contagious and communicable to all the other poor souls packed into the ER, (D) bleeding like a stuck pig, or (E) otherwise in severe danger of kicking the bucket in short succession, treatment and care also did not always come quickly. Obviously, those most severely ill or injured had to be treated first. _Walking wounded come after all those worse off … like in triage protocol_.

By the time Kateri and Clinton reached the hospital, Yong Fei had already been whisked off to surgery, and Jess was also off … somewhere being looked at. The ER was crowded, very crowded with no place to wait, but with the help of their FBI badges and the assistance of a nurse that Kateri knew— _not all my contacts are street folk and low lifes_ —Clinton and Kateri were not kicked out to the waiting room to wait but allowed to wait a few hallways back from the ER where they were nearer where Jess seemed to be but also out of the way.

That afternoon rated high on the list of the longest afternoons of Kateri’s life and probably Clinton’s, too. The two had found a wall to help hold up, and Clinton spent a while just starring off into space, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Kateri was content to stand … _lean_ … sentinel at his side, mentally reciting the Rosary time after time for lack of anything else to do at the moment.

_It’s Sunday anyway._

_Doesn’t seem like Sunday_.

At one point when Clinton looked particularly gloomy— _thinking about your sister … me?_ —Kateri shifted closer until her shoulder was pressed against his arm. The touch broke him from his dark thoughts, and he looked down at her and gave a half-smile.

“You know,” Clinton noted quietly, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, “I think this’ll put the kibosh on Mr. Ji’s immigration interview.”

“Yeaaaa,” Kateri drawled, “I think it bloody well will.” She paused and let her head sink down onto his shoulder, and she let her eyes slip closed for a moment. “Is there a verb for to cuff in Kanien'kéha?”

“As in handcuffing people, not hitting them? Not that I know of, but I knew what you meant.”

 _Interesting. Didn’t figure so_.

Kateri hmmmed, “Figured. Just curious.”

* * *

It was early evening before Mr. Ji was out of surgery— _gut wounds are a mess_ —and Jess and Barnes reappeared from wherever they had been stashed while the doctors had been looking at him and he had been waiting for tests. Jess was grumbling quietly about “bruises the size of Rhode Island” as he appeared. He looked a little pale and winced and went a little paler as he pulled on his jacket, but otherwise he looked alright, for which Kateri was very, very grateful.

_Broken ribs are awful to deal with._

_One of us nearly kicking the bucket in a six-month period is quite enough, thank you_.

_I’ve got a candle to light in thanks next time I make it to mass._

“That was a close call, bro,” Clinton commented as the four of them fell into line and started making their way out of the maze of hallways to wherever Hana and Kenny were waiting, “What are you going to tell the folks when they see you?”

 _Uh, good question_.

“And Tali?” Barnes prompted.

_Uhhhhhhhhhhh, yeaaaaaaa._

_That’ll also take a little more thinkin’ to figure out how to explain_. (Somethings Jess would say to Nelson and Marilou that he wouldn’t say or, at least not say in the same way, to Tali.) _Having kids can make things more complicated._

“Uh, I don’t know,” Jess replied with a wince, finishing straightening out his shirt collar, “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Well, let me know,” Clinton answered, “because they’re going to ask.”

“Let me know, too, Jess,” Kateri answered. _Next Sunday dinner, I might get asked, and if I don’t have an answer ready if asked, it’ll show._

At that point, the four teammates reached the hallways where Hana and Kenny were. Kenny had been sitting in a windowsill, Hana leaning against the wall next to him, and the two had been talking quietly, but they broke off from their conversation and fell into line as Jess and the others appeared.

“Boss,” Kenny greeted Jess, “Gave us a good scare there. How you feelin’?”

_Good scare? Understatement of the century._

_Probably going to find plenty more grey in my hair after that_. It felt like hearing that gunshot and watching Jess fall had scared a few years off of her life. _Must have been how Rak … Clinton felt when he saw me felt._

Clinton and Kateri fell into step at the back of the group, and Kateri muffled a yawn behind one hand. Once the adrenaline from earlier had worn off, she had started feeling quite tired, a condition that just standing or leaning or sitting for hours hadn’t exactly helped cure. _I’m ready to get some sleep, and it’s nowhere near bedtime for us with a case like this. Late nights, maybe all-nighters, it probably’s going to be_. _Gotta find Hayden before it’s too late._

“I’m fine,” Jess responded. _Uh, by what definition considering the way you’re wincing every time you move wrong?_ “The vest worked.” _Thank bloody goodness, or you wouldn’t be standing here with a shot like that_.

“That’s too bad,” Hana broke in at that point, mischief oozing from every pore and every word, “You know, I’m next in line to run the team.”

 _Well, not really, but it sounds good_. Being at the back of the group meant that Kateri didn’t even have to bother to hide her smirk, though she did suppress the snort of laughter.

Jess gave a wry snort.

“No, seriously!” Hana protested.

“One day, Hana, one day.”

* * *

Now that Mr. Ji was out of surgery, Jess and Barnes with Kenny for translating, if necessary, went off to be ready to talk to him as soon as he was conscious and coherent. Kateri, Clinton, and Hana returned to HQ meanwhile to get back to work and to see what, if anything, ERT had discovered yet at St. James Church in Flushing or at Mr. Ji’s apartment nearby.

Jess and Barnes with Kenny in tow returned to HQ about an hour-and-a-half later with news, stories, and dinner. When questioned, Ji had tried to protest that he “minded his own business” and also tried to defend himself by saying that he “worked in church.” _Very nasty people have gone to church. Billy goes to church, does stuff for church. Just going or working there doesn’t mean much_. At that point, Ji had made some smart-mouth comments in Chinese, which Kenny had handily handed back to him in spades, and then said he wanted a Human Right’s lawyer.

“Then he decided to clarified and said he wanted Jerry Cohen,” Kenny finished the story.

 _He did, did he?_ Kateri shook her head, rolling her eyes and giving a wry smirk.

“Ji was not on Counter-Intel’s radar as far as Agent Brown knows. I’ve requested access to Hayden’s work files, and they’ll see what they can do,” added Jess, wrapping up the dinner briefing to a close.

Kateri did snort at that point, “Which probably means they’ll get us the intel in a few months, if ever, or exactly when we close the case.” As big as mess as this was for Counter-Intel, from the briefing, it didn’t sound like they were being that cooperative.

A little while later, Barnes’ phone rang, and she stepped away from the table to answer it. Within a few minutes, she returned. “ERT found six pounds of Fentanyl at Mr. Ji’s place.” _Okkkaayyyy. That explains a few things_. The ERT report on the church had come in earlier, but they hadn’t been finished at the apartment yet when Kateri had last checked.

“The guy slings dope when he’s not cleaning the church,” Barnes finished, retaking her seat on the other side of Clinton from Kateri.

_How ironic considering his protestations earlier._

“That’s why he was so bouncy when we dropped in on him,” noted Clinton.

“I was going to say twitchy and all around weird,” Kateri added, scrubbing her hands across her face and through her hair. _Bloody h**l, I’m tired._ “But bouncy works.”

There was a general laugh at that.

“According to work files Counter-Intel sent over,” Hana was shuffling papers and occasionally poking at her tablet as she spoke, “Hayden did a work-up on our Mr. Ji two years ago on suspicion of being a Chinese mole.”

_Ji? Seriously?_

Kateri sent Hana and her stack of file an incredulous look. Ji didn’t seem the mole type to her. _Drug dealer, I can believe. But a spy? He’s too twitchy. What could he get into that would be worth anything to the Chinese? He’d fail a drug test in an instant._

“Based on what?” Jess asked, pulling his glasses off.

“Ji was flashing a lot of cash,” Hana replied, “Going to bar and strip-clubs near military contractors in Brooklyn, but Hayden concluded that Ji was just your run-of-the-mill dope dealer. A confidential human source with contacts in Beijing confirmed that Ji was not a Chinese asset.”

_Interesting, and who exactly was this source? A reliable one?_

“But Hayden kept the card with his important papers,” Clinton noted.

“To throw us off the trail,” was Jess’ solution for that potential problem, “Ji’s a decoy.”

“That may be,” Kateri put in. _Still a little suspicious_ , “But if need be, I can track down more about him. Six pounds’ a good haul. Between my people and my people who know other people, somebody’ll know him. I’m more interested in this source, though …”

A knock at that door that led to the hallway off which were the other Fugitive Response Team muster rooms, some storage rooms, and the elevators/stairs that went upstairs prevented Kateri from saying more.

“Sorry to barge in,” it was Agent Brown himself who entered, “One of our Chinese assets was snatched off a Beijing street yesterday,”— _bloody h**l. That’s not good_ —“No one’s heard from him.”

 _Double bloody h**l_.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jess answered, looking at Kateri and the others for a moment an unreadable look in his eyes before swiveling to look at Brown.

_What’s this got to do with us, though?_

“We think Hayden gave them the name as a sample of what he has to offer,” Brown continued, “It’s going to get worse. We don’t have time to pull our people out."

_And?_

_We’re working as best we can and as fast as we can._

“Hayden’s buying time by wasting ours,” Jess muttered.

Clinton noted that the team needed to get ahead of Hayden, but, though she agreed with her partner, the question in Kateri’s mind was how. _How the bloody h**l do we get ahead of a rouge Counter-Intel agent allied with the bloody Chinese of all bloody people? Spooks! I prefer the normal crooks we get saddled with._

“Yea, you’re right,” Jess agreed, turning back to the table and the piles of papers spread over it, “He had a confidential human source he used to work with, someone with Beijing contacts. That person might know how the Chinese are planning to get Hayden out of the country.”

Brown’s reply to that was in the spirit of some of the most infuriating moments of Kateri’s career with Organized Crime. “Well, confidential human sources are off-limits. I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound very sorry.

Kateri bit her lip to keep herself from saying something importune. Internally she was fuming. _You expect us to help clean up your messes, you come downstairs prompting us, but when we ask you for the info we need to move ahead, you stonewall us. Seriously?_

 _CIs know the risks of working for us, for heaven’s sake_.

Jess pulled off his glasses, and his voice when he replied was a lot more controlled and polite than Kateri’s would have been. “Not knowing Chinese methods, we’re flying blind.”

“This CHS could point us in the right direction,” Barnes added, backing up and tag-teaming with Jess.

“Not my call,” Brown responded, “We’ve been told, ‘Stay away from her.’” _Told by whom? And a her, well, that narrows the potential list_.

Jess swiveled in his chair to look around the table, and a very Jess look entered his eyes. He swiveled back to look at Brown. “Nobody told us.”

_You’ve got a plan._

_This’ll be interesting._

_It’s going to be a long night._

* * *

[1] You can clearly see in the episode that Jess shot Yong Fei in the gut, and despite some Hollywood portrayals, gut shots bleed very badly and are EXTREMELY serious. Cf., <https://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/152464465681/the-writers-guide-to-abdominal-trauma-1>. Thus, Clinton’s response—not doing anything to treat him despite the rapidly expanding blood stain on Yong Fei’s shirt—does not fit in with Clinton’s character or the sought-for realism in the show. Thus, I am … fixing things.

[2] <https://scriptmedic.tumblr.com/post/152304933522/the-writers-guide-to-bleeding-shock-and-trauma>.

[3] <https://www.amtrauma.org/page/traumalevels>


	3. Monday, February 24: Day 2

Sunday night was, as Kateri had figured it would be, a very long night, especially for the first day of a case, but this type of case, this type of fugitive, and the consequences and repercussions if they did not find Hayden in time … were not exactly usual. The clock had recently ticked past 1am by the time plans were in place for the next day and everyone was almost too exhausted to work anymore. The team would have to be back at it in too few hours for anybody to even consider taking the time to go home, which meant that beds had to be figured out.

_With traffic some days, some of us’d almost have to turn around as soon as we got home._

_Not much point in that. Would waste valuable sleeping time anyway._

_We can do without our own beds._

Without the bus, sleeping arrangements were more than a little complicated. Like at the bus, there were only beds in the team’s muster room, and there was also the couch at HQ, but the floors were concrete, which were impossible to sleep on unlike the bus floor, which was … kinda carpeted. _Not great carpet for sleeping on. Not the fluffy stuff, but it’s better than nothin’_. Two beds and one couch and … _Hana’s pretty nice desk chair, and there’re six of us_. Jess, who winced every time he moved wrong and whose chest was probably rainbow colored by that point, took Hana’s chair. _Sleeping flat with bruised or busted ribs … ugh, no_. (Kateri remembered quite well how much that hurt.) Straws were drawn for the beds and couch. Kateri and Hana lost out, but Kateri had a solution.

“Got any objections to an old lumpy couch or a futon?” Kateri asked, turning to Hana.

“If it’s softer than hard concrete, nope.”

_I feel that._

_I’m almost tired enough to sleep on the floor, though._

_Or in my car._

“Good. Get your stuff if you want anything, and we’ll head upstairs.”

The others were startling to settle down, but the word “upstairs” drew attention, especially from Clinton.

“Where upstairs?” His look was somewhere between skeptical, fond, and concerned.

 _Not that floor of upstairs_. When Kateri referred to the upstairs, she usually meant her old section. Not this time, though. “The computers techs like me, and there’re some extra ‘beds’ squirreled away.”

_By beds I mean things that can sub as half-decent beds._

_Not actual bed beds_.

That was better accepted, and Kateri and Hana departed upstairs to the floor where were crammed all the analysts and computer techs who didn’t have desks either in the JOC or on the floors where the other units worked. There was a lumpy couch in the breakroom and several people Kateri knew had futons that they might be willing to share.

_Probably. Hopefully._

_Or sleeping in the car, it is._

“How’d I not know this?” Asked Hana, an intrigued light in her eyes, though her words were interrupted by a face-breaking yawn.

Kateri leaned back against the wall of the elevator and let her eyes slip closed as the floors ticked up on the display. She shrugged. “Don’t know. The techs for my old unit didn’t have desks with us, so I spent a lot of time down there with ‘em or elsewhere on the floor. The techs actually liked … like me.”

“Unlike the morons that made up your old unit,” Hana’s voice was scathing.

“Yeaaaa.”

* * *

The techs Kateri knew were more than happy to let the two of them crash on their floor, especially considering the urgency of the team’s case and the man they were trying to track down, and Kateri settled down in one corner of the office belong to Maria, a friend of Zoey’s. The blue glow from her three monitors lit the room with a dim light and strange shadows, and Kateri fell asleep, almost in an instant, it felt like, to the familiar clacking of keys. _Pullin’ ‘n ‘lnighter, I guess._ It seemed like Kateri had only been asleep for a few minutes when a hand shook her away, and she opened her eyes to see Maria bending over her and a dim light filtering in through the blinds.

It was 6am.

After a long day and only five-ish hours of sleep, Kateri felt horrifically zombie-like as she pushed herself to her feet, scrubbing her hands across her face and through her hair, and thanked her friend for the use of her futon.

 _It’s going to be a coffee-kinda day_.

_Lots of coffee._

_Or a horrifically cold shower kinda day._

_That’ll wake you up right quick._

It didn’t help her tiredness that Kateri had been in the midst of a very strange dream when her friend woke her, and waking up in the middle of dreams always made her even groggier.

 _Better go wake Hana_.

Hana was just as bleary-eyed and zombie-like as Kateri currently felt but dragged herself off the break room couch with a minimum of grumbling, and together the two took the elevator back downstairs. The others were already up and somewhat at ‘em as they reentered the team’s muster room, and Kenny was at the kitchenet prepping coffee and oatmeal.

 _Bless him_.

After application of part of a big mug of coffee, Kateri felt slightly less bleary-eyed and a little more human, and she took a seat at the conference table to plow her way through a bowl of oatmeal. _Food and then work_. A few minutes later, Jess took the seat beside. _What’d I do? Or should I be asking what I am supposed to be doing?_

“Has Tali shown you her video yet?” Jess asked, pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of the nose.

 _Uhh? Okay, not the question I was expecting_.

 _You get much sleep at all, boss?_ Sleeping with rib injuries was an unpleasant experience and now always the most restful one either.

Mentally running through the semi-frequent texts and pictures that Tali had sent her— _Glad I caved a while back and just got unlimited data_ —Kateri came up with no recent video that might fit what Jess was asking, so she shot him a puzzled look, “What video?”

Jess shook his head, a half-smile curling up one corner of his mouth, “I won’t spoil her surprise by telling you, but ask her to send you the video she and her friends just did. She’s very proud of it.”

 _Uh, okay_.

“Sure, Jess. Thanks. I’ll text her later.”

* * *

After breakfast and lots of coffee, the team ran through one last time the finalized details for the off-the-books meetings with the confidential human source mentioned in Hayden’s papers. _The person we finallllyyyyy got a name for. No thanks to Counter-Intel_. Jess’ plan rode on the fact that the _team_ had never been told that they couldn’t contact her and on the fact that sometimes bending the rules was necessary for getting the job done. _Just gotta be careful how far you take that_. Kenny and Hana would distract the US Marshalls guarding the CHS, while Barnes and Clinton made contact. Kateri, doing what Kateri did best, would keep an eye out for trouble and for watching eyes. She had a sixth sense for when people were watching her.

The meet— _can we call it a meet if the CHS doesn’t know we’re comin’?_ _Not a traditional meet, at least_ —was set for 10:30am-ish or whenever the Marshalls arrived downtown with the CHS. _This is why we go well in advance … in case for security, they pull a switcheroo with the time_. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened. _It’s actually wise, in theory._

The meeting downtown went off without a hitch. A short time before the CHS—Amy Chang—was set to arrive with the Marshalls, Clinton and Kateri and Barnes were in place in front of the target location, the alley way next to which currently already contained a Homeland Security van. Perusing her phone, Barnes stood on one side of the staircase, which was overlooked by a Neo-Classical-esque pediment-- _I still remember something from that architecture class in college_ \--stairs which led up into the stately building. Clinton and Kateri stood on the other side. Or rather, Kateri sat perched on the retaining wall by the stairs, and Clinton stood leaning on the wall next to her, the two of them keeping up a low-voiced conversation in Mohawk on a meandering series of topics.

_If you’re hanging out waiting for something, doing nothing can be quite suspicious._

_People in this area don’t generally just stand around doin’ nothing, stand lookin’ like they’re waitin’ for something … unless they’re up to no good and are reallllyyy bad crooks._

_Doing something normal like checking your phone or talking … if you do it right …’s less suspicious_.

“So,” Kateri asked at one point as the clock ticked closer to 10:30, “Know anything about this video that Jess says Tali made?”

“Hmmm?” Clinton looked up from his phone and then shook his head, “I haven’t heard anything. If this case hadn’t happened and we’d made it to Sunday dinner yesterday, we probably would have, though.”

 _True enough_.

“I’ll have to text her later and see what this’ all about. Probably won’t want to wait to share until the next Sunday dinner we actually make,” Kateri noted, pausing to blow warm air over her gloved hands before stuffing them back in her pockets, “Want me to tell you, or do you want to wait ‘till you see her next?”

“I’ll wait and be surprised, but thanks, kid,” Clinton responded. He paused for a second and then added, “I’ve been forgetting to ask you. Did your cactus … cactuses? … survive your stay with the folks?”

 _Ah, yes, me and my lack of a green thumb_.

“Yes,” Kateri grumbled, a look of exasperated annoyance, “And it actually looked better for the lack of my presence.”

Clinton chuckled in amusement, “Read the book Dad gave you, kid. That should help.”

“I have already,” Kateri replied. She paused and made a face, “I think I’ve been watering ‘em too much.”

Before more could be said, an SUV with tinted windows and a US Marshall logo emblazoned on one side door pulled to a stop at the curb down by the alleyway. _Here we go_. Two men in dark coats emerged—s _o stereotypical. What is this a cop show or a spy thriller?_ —one opening the door for a petite Asian woman— _the CHS_ —to emerge from the backseat. The two Marshalls started to make their way up the alley past the Homeland Security truck toward the back entrance to the building, their protectee— _is that a word?_ —following in their wake.

There was the sound of bodies colliding and liquid splattering, and then a loud gasp, and Hana’s outraged voice exclaimed, “Oh, my G*d, look what you did to my jacket!” _Ah, the coffee trick, that’s what they pulled._ Kateri hadn’t heard earlier exactly how she and Kenny were going to pull off the distraction. _The old tricks still can work quite well._

The discussion between Kenny and Hana and Marshalls descended into a normal street-squabble about fault, dry-cleaning, and the like. When badges were pulled, Kateri, Barnes, and Clinton made their move, walking up the street, tapping Ms. Chang’s shoulder covertly— _watching the action with some amount of confusion. Can’t blame her_ —and then moving over toward Homeland’s car.

“Sheryll Barnes from the FBI Fugitive Taskforce,” Barnes introduced herself quickly to the CHS, leaning one arm on the hood of the car, “We’re looking for Paul Hayden. We need your help.”

Letting Barnes do the talking for the moment, Kateri and Clinton scanned the street in either direction, keeping an eye on the Marshalls— _who probably won’t appreciate the meddling if they notice us. Don’t really wanna be noticed either. Hence the distraction_ —and an eye out for anything or anyone else unusual.

“I’m not allowed to talk to you,” Ms. Chang replied in a soft voice, her attention split between Barnes and her bodyguards.

_Who exactly is giving these orders, I wonder?_

“He’s already given them a name,” Clinton inserted, and Kateri turned towards them slightly so she could see them out of her peripheral vision but kept on scanning the street. “That person’s missing and probably dead.”

_Or wishes they were dead …_

_Chinese aren’t known for their mercy._

_Or their belief in human rights._

“Listen,” Barnes pushed, “We need information on that: extraction, communications. How do they talk to him?”

The CHS glanced again between Barnes and her guards, “Give me a number. Quick!”

Barnes slipped her a piece of paper … _business card?_ … with the soft words, “We’re counting on you.”

 _Hopefully not in vain_.

With those final words, it was time to go, and Barnes and Clinton headed back up the street, Kateri falling into line beside her partner. Hana and Kenny would disengage when they could so not to make the Marshalls suspicious. Once they were clear, they would circle around by another route and then meet the others at the car parked a few streets over.

* * *

By the time Kateri and the others returned to HQ, Jess was moving about the team’s muster room much better than he had been first thing that morning. Earlier, after everyone had emerged from their respective beds … _or chair in the boss’ case_ … Jess had been moving quite stiffly … _like an old, old man with just went several rounds with … I have no idea. ‘m not up on boxing_ … but now he seemed better. _Maybe the meds kicked in._ As Kateri well knew from painful experience, mornings were always the worst for broken/cracked/bruised ribs as you kinda went stiff and sore overnight as your muscles kinda tensed/froze up, and then you had to get all the kinks worked out once you actually got up and moving. _That can take a bit. Isn’t exactly pleasant._

As Kenny started rummaging through the fridge and Hana went off to hang up her jacket to dry— _good thing she didn’t wear her favorite_ —Barnes gave the boss a quick run-down of the meeting and then settled down on the couch beside him, noting with a small measure of concern, “I wouldn’t have pinned my hopes on an informant.”

_Yeaaa, but if she’s willing to spill … despite whoever’s telling her not too … could be worth it._

_Might be a big if, though_.

The boss sighed … _or groaned?_ .. and pulled off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his eyes. _Too much time spent looking at files?_ “I’ve been thinking about Hayden … the moment he knew he was caught. He had a Cyanide pill in his pocket. Based on his previous suicide attempt, you’d think he’d just take it.”

 _Maybe …_ Kateri mused from her seat at the conference table. She was sitting half-sprawled, legs stretched out in front of herself, eyes half-lidded, head leaned back. _I did not get enough sleep last night. Might as well take advantage of the chance to sit down. We’ll be runnin’ around again soon enough_. She mulled over the boss’ words again.

_Maybe Hayden just couldn’t work up the courage to try it again?_

_Our self-preservation instinct’s pretty strong._

Jess was still talking, “Kill himself, but he didn’t. Obviously, he thinks he has something to live for.”

 _That’d make sense, too_.

“An exit plan to a tropical island?” Mused Barnes ironically, “With the money the Chinese paid him to betray his own country.”

_Ugh, no. What is it about people and beaches and islands?_

_No, thank you. Much rather’d look at the forest and the mountains back in Quebec._

_Cooler there, too._

_Not so humid, either._

“Money, we haven’t found yet,” the boss replied wryly.

_Welllllll_

“But still lookin’ for,” exclaimed Kenny … much too energetically. _Share some energy, KC_. Kateri opened one eye to peer at him. He was standing between the other table and the sink, applesauce in one hand and a spoon which he was gesturing with in the other. _Don’t splatter food, please, or YOU’RE cleaning it up_. “Alright, exit plans. I’ve got …,” he paused semi-dramatically, “kids and a cabin on a lake.”

Kateri opened the other eye and pushed herself straighter in her chair with a sigh and a yawn. _Sounds like you, Kenny. You’ll make a good dad._

“You mean we’re not going to do this job forever and ever?” Hana asked good-naturedly. She was sprawled out on her stomach on one of the beds, head propped up on one hand. “A bathing suit and a sailboat.”

_A sailboat with room for your computers?_

_Not sure you’d seem like you without all your tech around._

Everyone looked over at Clinton next, who was sitting, book in hand, at the small table on the other side of the room by the bathroom doors. “Couple of horses and a place in the mountains.”

_Definitely sounds like you, Rak … partner!_

Everyone looked to Kateri next, and she hesitated. Before November 22, 2019, when she had nearly kicked the bucket, before everything that came after that had changed her life for the better in so many ways, she had a well-thought out plan for what she was going to do after she left the FBI. _All that threw a very-pleasant, very welcome monkey wrench into my life plans, not that I’m complaining in the slightest_. And now … she wasn’t so sure what she wanted to do … after work. _You’ve been quiet too long_ , one side of her brain prompted her, picking up on the concerned look Clinton was sending her. “A giant dog and visits to all of you,” she finally said. _That’s the simple part_.

_I want a dog big enough to squash me if it sits on me, not one with the size of a rat and the temperament to match. No fluff balls._

_Never had a dog as kid. Always wanted one though. Never enough money or space to get one_.

_One as big as I want wouldn’t have exactly fit in our apartment._

“Okay, so Charlotte and I have talked about it,” Barnes went next, “A restorative justice clinic for at-risk youth … and grandkids.”

Kateri smiled. _Sounds like a very good plan. Knew a lot of kids growing up who coulda used a place like that_. Only the boss was left, but there was dead silence after Barnes finished. _He not have one? That’s … odd. Concerning?_ The boss finally opened his mouth as if to say something, but then Barnes’ phone began to buzz, cutting him off before he could begin.

“It’s from the informant!” Barnes exclaimed after grabbing for her phone, “The Chinese are using a LinkedIn account to communicate with Hayden.” She rose from the couch and went over to the table where Kenny was sitting with his computer and passed over her phone with the relevant information on it.

 _Okay. That’s different_.

“Got it," said Kenny a few seconds later after typing something into his computer. _The account?_ Kateri pushed herself to her feet and drifted over to her partner’s side to look over Kenny’s shoulder at the profile for an Ariel Yi. “It looks like a regular account for a sales manager at a Hong Kong chemical company. Give me a sec.”

A minute and a lot of keyboard clacking later, a copy of the chat box with the messages between Hayden and the Chinese appeared on Kenny’s screen. “Alright, I’m in.”

_Still looks like a lot of pretty squiggles to me._

_Glad Kenny can make sense of all that_.

“These chats are all in Chinese,” said Hana, who had moved from the bed when the text came in, swiveling her chair from her desk to glance back at Kenny. “Crosby?”

 _Ah, the joys of being the resident expert_.

“Alright,” Kenny responded, “They’re talking about a meet, setting up a bottleneck near the Prudential Center,”— _Why Jersey?_ — “to weed out anyone who’s following their agents.”

“In Newark,” Barnes commented, “That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

“What exactly does ‘near’ mean in their view?” Added Kateri, scrubbing her hands across her face, “Lot of space around the Prudential Center where you could set up a bottleneck.”

 _Lot of space, lot of ground to cover_.

Jess pushed himself to his feet with a muffled goran and came over toward the screens from the couch. “On what side of the Prudential Center are they setting up the bottleneck?” He asked.

Kenny glanced back down at his computer and the string of chat messages. “It says Broad Street.”

 _Know the name. Don’t remember which side that’s on_.

Hana was working her magic at her computer and zoomed in on the map she had already brought up a minute before, highlighting Broad Street which ran roughly north-south. On one side of the street was a large green space … Washington Park.

 _Well … I think we might have ourselves a meeting place_.

_Lots of people milling around so a few more won’t stand out._

_Good sight lines, it looks like, despite all the trees._

“D**n it,” the boss swore, “Of course. Washington Park on Broad Street, that’s where he caught his Russian spy.” He gestured pointedly at the screen, “That’s where he’s setting the meet with the Chinese. He’s thumbing his nose at the Bureau.”

_Fitting and stupid at the same time._

_Pride goeth before a fall, as the verse goes._

_First rule of avoiding the law: don’t set your meets at the really obvious spots._

* * *

With a quick stop to pick up lunch, the team headed across the Hudson River and into Jersey. The Prudential Center and FBI Headquarters were less than ten miles apart as the crow flies, but the traffic crossing from New York and into Newark seemed to be perpetually bad, and there was plenty of time to eat in the cars as the agents wound their way through traffic.

Washington Park was about three-quarters of a mile north of the Prudential Center along Broad Street. For a chilly Monday afternoon, there were a few more people than Kateri expected moving about the park, jogging, walking dogs, sitting and reading the newspaper, and _so on and so forth. Lunch breaks?_

The team scattered to their various positions across the decent-sized park to watch for Hayden, and Kateri went with Clinton across Washington Place where they took up their position at the corner of the building across from the south-east corner of the park.

Then it was time to wait.

Nothing happened for a while, and there was no sign of Hayden or anyone looking shifty for over an hour. In the meantime, they all did various things to pass the time and not draw attention to themselves by being in one place for so long. Hana, a stone’s throw away from Kateri and Clinton’s corner, was sitting at a bench reading something. Kateri could occasionally catch glimpses of Kenny as he made loops along his side of the park as he appeared to talk on his phone. Barnes and Jess were too far away for Kateri to see.

_If something happens, hope Jess’ well clear._

_Or his bruised ribs’d probably become cracked or broken much too easily._

_And after yesterday, that’s the last thing we need._

“Finding Hayden here almost seems to … obvious … good … to be true,” Kateri commented in Mohawk at one point, looking down at her phone in her hand for appearance’s sake before going back to glancing around the park. _Only Clinton’s close enough to see the screen’s not on_.

“It makes sense why Hayden would pick this place,” Clinton replied, glancing over at her for a moment before looking back over at the park, “He’s sticking his finger in the Bureau’s eye.”

_Well, yeaaa, but …._

“I get that,” Kateri replied with a shiver and a momentary chatter of teeth as a particularly high gust of wind swept across the plaza, “But it’s like the first rule of avoiding the law. Don’t hide out and go to the obvious places. You don’t go home. You don’t go to your usual haunts. Choosing this place … I would have thought Hayden had too much experience to pick it.”

Clinton snorted but nodded, “No one ever said revenge makes you act … in a way commensurate with your experience.”

“Welllll …,” Kateri drawled, “Good point. Maybe he didn’t think we’d put the pieces together, either.” _I’ve got my doubts, but …_ She glanced around the park again, cataloging the positions of her other teammates whom she could see. _Still’d think he’d be smarter than this_.

“Or he doesn’t care.”

Now Kateri snorted, “Pride goes before a fall.”

“The downfall of many a …,” Clinton broke off suddenly, his gaze snapping back toward the park from his phone. He put his phone up to his ear long enough to fiddle with his comm. _Vox_. “Got something,” he said a moment later.

Kateri casually slipped her phone back into her pocket and turned towards Clinton so her left side was hidden by his bulk, and she switched her comm back to Vox, also. _Switched it off Vox so we could talk without boring and distracting the others._ She followed his gaze across the street to an Asian man wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap and carrying a backup. _Shifty looking fellow the way he moves and keeps looking around. Subtle, you aren’t_.

“South-east corner,” Clinton continued quietly, updating the others, “Male, Asian, NYU Jacket, backpack.”

“I see him,” Hana replied. Kateri saw her put her paper down and climb to her feet. She started moving up toward the street as if her break or outing was over and it was time to get on to whatever was next on the agenda.

“Give him room. Let him lead us to Hayden,” Barnes’ reply came a second later, a note of caution in her voice. _Can’t see her from here, but she must be able to see the suspect, at least_.

The likely suspect—Hayden’s probable contact—was continuing to act like he had absolutely no training in this kind of work … at all. _Which he might not._ He was turning and looking all around and acting very nervous. _Twitchy types make it harder to tail ‘em_. They could also be more dangerous. Unpredictable. There could be less warning when they got suspicious and decided to do something stupid. _And when they do stupid, people generally get hurt._ Sometimes the suspects themselves paid the price of their stupidity. Sometimes it was the agents.

Hana was continuing slowly up the pathway towards Twitchy. Suddenly, Twitchy looked down the path towards her and turned quickly back towards the street as he slipped his phone into his backpack. _Uh, oh_. Kateri nudged Clinton silently … a warning. He gave a small nod … _I see_ , it said.

Clinton and Kateri moved forward towards the cross-walk. Twitchy, who had been moving toward the street, looked at them and then suddenly turned back towards Hana.

 _Bloody h**l_.

“We’re blown,” Kateri muttered at almost the same time as Hana herself said, “He made us.”

 _This wasn’t how this was supposed to go_.

Within seconds, the situation devolved into a fight. Hana caught Twitchy’s arm as he was passing her on the sidewalk. He jerked backwards, pulling his arm from her grasp and shedding his backpack as he moved, and then started trying to use Hana as … _the foot version of a punching bag_. Kateri swore, and she and her partner bolted forwards on an intercept course.

 _Hana’s good, but he’s half again her size_.

Thankfully, however, Twitchy was not as good a fighter than his first couple of blows indicated and then he could have been with his size and build. _Not terrible, though_. He and Hana exchanged several blows as Kateri and Clinton closed the distance, but on one kick, Hana was able to catch his leg and shove him off balance so that he toppled to the ground. _Good one!_

The force needed to shove Twitchy over caused Hana to stumble backwards and Twitchy was back on his feet in an instant. _You’re fast, I’ll give you that._ But before Twitchy could capitalize on her stumble, Kateri was there. She was a faster runner than her partner and had closed the distance to Hana’s position a couple of strides ahead of him. Eyeballing Twitchy’s posture and the set of his feet, she grabbed a fistful of his coat and physically dragged him around and off-balance. He quickly recovered, though. _Adaptable_. The two exchanged a couple of blows in an instant. His height was an advantage, though, and Twitchy then got in a kick that made Kateri stumble backwards to going down with a broken knee-cap.

But then Clinton was there, driving Twitchy back away from Kateri to give her time to get her balance back. The two exchanged several blows, most of which Clinton was able to block and return handily, but one caught him square in the face. Clinton stumbled, and Kateri stepped forward, ready to intervene. Tag-teaming against plucky— _and somewhat skilled—_ fighters was a well-practiced routine. Clinton, however, didn’t need to help from either Hana, who had drawn her gun as soon she’d gotten rebalanced, or from Kateri. Despite the punch to the face, he ducked some sort of spinning roundhouse-like kick thing, and three seconds later Clinton had Twitchy down on the ground and was cuffing him, covered by Hana and Kateri.

 _I have the awesomest partner … and parental figure … ever_.

“Where’s Hayden?” Exclaimed Barnes, running up.

 _No bloody clue._ Kateri replied mentally, glancing around, cataloging the attention the scene was drawing. “If he was nearby and has half a brain, he’ll have rabbited after this.”

 _He’d have to know the meet was blown_.

* * *

The SUVs were brought around, and Hana and Kenny marched the struggling, grumbling, _and probably cursing_ Twitchy off towards them. Kateri wondered, at that moment, if she should be glad that she didn’t understand Chinese. _If there’s anything especially storybook worthy or creative, Kenny’ll spill later_.

“You okay?” Kateri asked her partner quietly as they moved to follow, “Looked like you got clocked pretty good.”

Clinton rubbed his jaw lightly, “I’m fine. Just a glancing blow.”

_Are you really?_

Shooting him a skeptical look, _you fuss over me, so I can fuss over you_ , Kateri stooped to grab Twitchy’s discarded backpack off the ground. Clinton smiled fondly, “I’m fine, kid.”

 _You’d better be_.

Returning to the cars, Kateri deposited the backpack with its to-be-determined contents on the hood of the other SUV, the one in which Twitchy had not been deposited. She could still hear his muttering drifting across from Kenny’s direction as they started searching through the backpack. Eventually, a car-door slam— _Kenny must have gotten enough of whatever he was blathering_ —and Kenny himself appeared, exasperation and annoyance bleeding from his voice, “He’s invoking. We’re not going to get anything out of him.”

_Surprise, surprise!_

Hana brandished the NYU student ID she’d just found, “His student ID says he’s 20.”

 _Balderdash_.

“Goin’ on 35,” Kenny scoffed, “Most likely a fake.”

 _Second rule of surviving undercover, a corollary to ‘don’t do stupid’: don’t be moronic on how you set up your fake ID_.

Kateri and Clinton ended up with a decent collection of medicine bottles to look through. _Too much for just one person … unless you’re as sick as a dog … with a laundry list of problems_.

“Losartan’s and Statins,” Clinton noted, reading the labels off the contents of the first bag, “90-day supply.”

“It’s what Hayden’s taking,” the boss noted, “for his trip. The Chinese are providing all the amenities.”

 _Of course, they are_.

“When it comes to amenities, skip the drugs. I’ll take real food, not crummy airplane snacks,” Kateri quipped. Then the label she’d just read mentally sunk in, and her expression switched to somewhere between puzzled and thunderstruck. “Albuterol, Asthma inhaler. Hayden has asthma???”

“Not according to his file,” replied Hana. _Okkkkayyyyy. Then why the h**l …_

“And Progesterone,” Clinton read off the final label, irony slipping into his voice, “I take it that’s not in his file either.”

_Uh, no._

“Women take it for PMS,” Barnes replied, shooting the boss a look, and Kateri suddenly put the pieces together.

 _Hayden’s taking company_.

Jess put her thoughts into words, “He ain’t goin’ alone.”

 _Well, bloody h**l_.

Twitchy’s backpack— _didn’t see what the name was on the ID. Might be fake anyway_ —was repacked, and the team scattered to the two SUVs. They’d need to drop Twitchy off at holding, but Kateri was guessing yet another visit to Mrs. Hayden in Westchester was probably in order.

* * *

After dropping Twitchy off at holding, Kenny, Barnes, and Hana headed north back to the Hayden place in Westchester, while Kateri and Clinton with Jess remained at HQ. Within two hours of leaving HQ, Barnes called with an update. The news was as everyone had expected.

At first, Mrs. Hayden had claimed that she had not heard from her husband, but when Barnes and Hana looked around the house, they saw that she was packing for a trip. _Yep_. She claimed she was going to her sister’s place in Raynham in order to get away from the attention … _of having a traitor for a husband. Understandable, and a good excuse for leaving._ When Hana pressed her, however, and suggested that they call the sister to confirm, Mrs. Hayden then got … _very nervous. Rule number three: if you think your house of card’s collapsing, don’t act like it. You act nervous, the house’ll collapse all the faster_. When pressed, she admitted that her husband actually had contacted her after all.

The two confirmed that Mrs. Hayden did not have asthma and did not take progesterone, and with that news it became yet clearer that Hayden was just using her as another distraction to keep the team off the real trail and give him time to rabbit. He wasn’t taking his wife with him. He was just using her. _Who does that? Seriously!_

Hayden was taking someone with him. That fact was clear enough, but since those medicines weren’t for Mrs. Hayden, the signs were pointing toward Hayden having a mistress. _Of course, she doesn’t think he’s the type to have one? Most wives with cheating husbands don’t, or at least wouldn’t want to admit it. And since you’ve been wrong about enough else so I’m not inclined to take your word for_ _it._

The team had gained another valuable lead.

_But how much longer do we have?_

_Already sold one name …_

_How much more time before he bolts and sells the rest?_

_So many lives at stake._


	4. Tuesday, February 25: Day 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for an LBGTQ character being outed non-consensually.

Tuesday morning, as many mornings on urgent hunts did, dawned early after yet another late night. _Sometimes I feel as if that happens every single bloody night_. No helpful information had come in from the tip line or from Kateri’s many and sundry contacts, to her surprise— _thought they would have found something—_ which _means we have to find someone who knows the tricks and doesn’t want to be found_. Her contacts were good, knew most of the tricks in the bad guy manual, but Hayden … he was a professional. Late the previous evening, the team had moved from HQ to the bus to use some of its extra equipment, and it was there the team finally crashed well after midnight.

Once everyone was up and reasonably awake, the team returned to searching through the information that Counter-Intel had sent over about Hayden and his movements … _before they discovered he was a traitor_ … and digging into Twitchy, the ‘NYU-student’ who had been captured dropping off the drugs for Hayden’s trip to China. Jess settled in at one of the bus tables and started studying and re-studying the contents of his goody-box as if he were Sherlock Holmes and the little things in that box would somehow give him all the answers.

_Don’t always understand how, but Jess’ pretty good at putting together something from basically nothing._

“Counter-Intel already did a deep dive on Hayden,” Hana commented mid-morning when the discussion returned to the man himself and his possible mistress … _probably the best explanation for why he had those other drugs_ , “And they didn’t find a mistress.”

“They only watched him for a month,” was Barnes’ explanation for that potential wrinkle, “Like they said, he’s highly disciplined. He knows how to cover his tracks.”

_That’s for bloody sure._

As she spoke from down the bus, Kateri drifted over from her seat to the table where Jess was sitting … _and rubbing his chest. Bruise the size of Rhode Island, I can believe it from the way he’s acting sometimes_ … and perched on the edge.

“Need some meds, boss?” Kateri asked quietly.

Jess shook his head, “Thanks, Kat, but I already took some. Just need them to take effect now.”

 _I understand that_. Watching him was almost making her own ribs ache in sympathy in remembrance of the pain she had gone through only a couple of months before … _waiting for my four bloody broken ribs to heal_. _Hurt like all bloody h**l_.

Kateri gave Jess a commiserating smile and rose, starting to head back down the bus to her own seat next to Clinton’s.

“And then there’s this,” Jess suddenly spoke, probably going off of Barnes’ last statement, and Kateri turned back, eyeballing the moth-in-amber ring of Hayden’s Jess had pulled from the goodie box, “He didn’t get it from his wife. Probably not something he’d buy himself.”

Kateri paused to listen and leaned against the wall by the kitchenette where Clinton was making coffee.

“A gift from a girlfriend?” Clinton posited.

 _Maybe. Not one I’d think of buying my boyfriend, though, … if I actually had one_.

“Maybe the reason he didn’t use the cyanide when he was caught,” Jess surmised.

“He’s got something … someone left to live for,” added Kateri, _but now we’re going back over old ground_.

Kenny made his way back down the bus back to his seat. He had his tablet in one hand and had been tapping at it intently for the last several minutes while sitting up with Barnes and Hana. “What do you make of this?” He asked, sitting down and gesturing to the map on his screen, “Starting about three years ago Hayden was taking Ubers to this neighborhood in Bushwick. Now there’s different drop-offs and pick-ups …”

_Kind of an idiot if you don’t do that in this line of work._

_Nth rule of undercover and not blowing your cover: don’t be predictable in your routes, drop-offs, and pick-ups_.

Kateri had stepped forward so that she could see Kenny’s screen better and study the map. Midway through Kenny’s discussion of his findings, Clinton finished his coffee-making and appeared at her shoulder, handing her the second mug, _which I hadn’t noticed he was making_.

“Niawen,” Kateri whispered.

“… all within a few blocks of each other. That went on a couple of times a week until about a year ago. Now weirdly enough one of the bars our church custodian Mr. Ji frequented is in the same area.”

 _Now that’s interesting_. Kateri raised the cup to her lips to take a sip … and realized it wasn’t coffee. It was tea … _okay, how much coffee have I even had this morning? Think I lost count … probably too much then … hence the tea_ … and not just any tea, but one of the kinds of tea Kateri quite liked and that Marilou made at the farm sometimes. She shot Clinton a look, and he only smiled and winked.

 _Oh, Rakeni_.

“Hayden was investigating Ji as a suspected Chinese mole. It would make sense that he would follow him to that bar,” noted Barnes.

_Wellll_

“Except,” Hana replied, turning from her computer, “Hayden was going to this neighborhood months before he started investigating Ji.”

_So what was the draw about this particular neighborhood and that particular bar?_

“So, something else was drawing him there …” Mused Kenny.

“Drawing him to that bar,” added Jess, setting the moth-in-amber ring down carefully on the table. _The mysterious mistress?_ “where he crossed paths with Ji. I think it’s time we had another conversation with our Mr. Ji.”

Jess and Kenny departed for the hospital where Ji was still recovering, leaving the others at the bus to keep working on what leads there were. They returned with good news within an hour. Ji had gone to the bar not to meet any men— _or spies_ —but to see a Chinese girl called ‘Silkworm,’ who served as a bartender there. The girl was known by that moniker because of the silkworm tattoo on her arm. She had since disappeared after quitting her job a year before.

“Silkworms turn into moths,” Jess noted, turning toward Hana, “I’d say this is the mysterious woman who gave Hayden that ring. Talk to the bar, Hana. Get this woman’s social. We can track her from there.”

* * *

It did not take long for Hana to get ahold of the bar, who were actually quite willing to cooperate … _that doesn’t always happen … sometimes they drag things out and almost force us into getting warrants before cooperating … sometimes it’s just straight to the warrants_ … and find the basic information on Silkworm’s identity. Once the team had something to go on, Kateri and Clinton as well as Barnes and the boss headed off to start their stake-out of the woman’s apartment complex, leaving Kenny and Hana in the bus in a large parking lot a block away, to keep digging up more about her.

The comms were set to vox, and various updates drifted across at Kenny and Hana discovered more information as well as low voice mutterings and scattered fragments of chit-chatting not fully caught by the microphones.

“Data’s coming in now from CBP,”[1] Kenny’s voice came over comms midway through the afternoon, “Zheng Ya Jie, AKA Cassie Zheng, entered the country from Taiwan six years ago on a student visa. She got the green card in a lottery, degree in Communication from SUNY, job’s as a bartender and conversation partner for a Chinese language school.”

 _Did pretty well for herself. Picking up and starting in a new country isn’t easy_. Kateri mused, her eyes going back to the doorway of Miss Zheng’s apartment complex. _My parents made it work when they came to America from the Reservation, but it wasn’t easy_.

“Which doesn’t explain how she paid four hundred thousand dollars cash for a one-bedroom condo in Flushing last year,” Hana added without missing a beat.

Kateri and Clinton exchanged surprised looks. _Four-hundred. Thousand. Dollars. For a one-bedroom condo!!!??? Bloody, bloody h**l, that’s a ton of money. That much’d probably pay my rent and my food bill for the rest of my life!_ She couldn’t imagine in her wildest dreams EVER spending that much on a place to stay, _‘specially not when I’m away from home as much as I am._

“Maybe it’s where the money Hayden got from the Chinese went to,” Clinton wondered aloud.

_Anyone else I’d start looking for drug or gang connections. In our line of work that’s more likely than a rich uncle suddenly popping up and then kicking the bucket._

“Young, pretty girlfriend, guess that tops off Hayden’s exit plan,” concluded Barnes.

_Makes sense._

_Use the wife as a distraction while you jet off into the sunset with the young, pretty girlfriend_.

_Same song, second verse, when it comes to cheating husbands._

The boss, however, did not seem as convinced, “Does it seem thin to you? Considering the grief over his son, his job dissatisfaction, money and romance just don’t seem enough.” From his tone of voice, he seemed to be talking as much to Barnes as to Kateri and the others.

“Maybe for you,” Barnes responded. There was a faint chuckle and a sigh, and then Barnes added, “By the way, you never told us what your exit plan was.”

There was a slight click, and then Kateri could tell from the changed background noises … and mostly from their lack of presence in the conversation … that Barnes and the boss had either switched off of vox or taken their comms out to talk privately.

Kateri started to raise one hand to her own comm but then aborted the movement and returned her left hand to her pocket. _Just’d have to remember to change it back later_. “Is Jess okay?” She asked, switching from English into Mohawk … _a lot more easily than I did years ago_ … and glancing over towards Clinton for a moment before her gaze went back out the window, “Sunday and all that? He didn’t have an answer yesterday, and …” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged.

“Getting shot does lead to changes in one’s life-plans,” Clinton answer dryly with a shrug of his own, “I have not had the chance to speak with him.”

“Fair enough.” _Getting shot sure changed up my life_.

Clinton paused for a moment, his gaze distant out the window, and then added pointedly, “You hesitated, too, before you mentioned the dog and the visits.”

 _Was wondering if you’d ask me about that_.

“I knew you noticed,” Kateri remarked dryly with a hint of somewhat sad humor curling up one corner of her mouth.

“Is there something more than what you said?” Clinton asked, then adding, “Was there something more?”

“Yea, a little,” Kateri shrugged, “I hadn’t thought after the FBI would be a thing for a long time, but I have a plan now. It just requires … a little readjusting … after the last three months. All this it …” she paused again, her brow furrowing, and switched back into English after reaching up to switch her comm off vox, “threw a monkey wrench, granted a very welcome one, into my plans. I need to find how to say monkey wrench in Mohawk, by the way, but that’s beside the point. For a while I was thinking I’d go back to Canada--I'd still visit of course. Probably'd die of boredom and loneliness without you all--but now,” she shrugged again, “Who knows. There’s a lot more tying me to America than there was. I’ll figure it out.”

Clinton nodded, a look of understanding passing across his face, and opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Cassie Zheng herself appeared in the arched entranceway of her brick-sided apartment building just up from the corner where Kateri and Clinton were sitting in their car. Switching her comm back to vox, Kateri quietly nudged her partner who wasn’t looking in that direction— _she‘s on my side of the car_ —and gestured with her head toward the subject. _Hope the boss and Barnes are watching … ‘specially if their comms are out_.

The two were, as Jess’ voice came a moment later, “Subject’s on the move.”

Cassie Zheng was a small petite woman. Black hair fell nearly to her shoulders, and her head was bent over the phone in her hand. A large purse was hooked over one arm, and a backpack was slung over the opposite shoulder.

“She’s got a backpack,” noted Kenny, “Maybe this is it. Maybe she’s going to meet up with Hayden.”

“Not much carrying capacity for a one-way trip. Most people would try to take a little more with ‘em if they’re leaving everything else behind,” Kateri commented, brow furrowed.

_Though if you over-do, that itself can draw attention._

_And a meet in broad day-light?_

_Well, there was the park … but no Hayden._

Miss Zheng crossed the street and headed up the street away, entering a large building just across from her apartment complex. The glass-front, however, was at exactly the wrong angle for Clinton and Kateri to see what was going on inside, though Barnes and the boss would have a better angle … hopefully.

“She’s doing her laundry,” Barnes stated a moment later. _Okay, that’s a good explanation_. _Backpack’s plenty big for laundry for one. Easier than carting a laundry basket_. Regardless, it made Kateri yet more thankful that she actually had a washer and dryer in her own apartment.

“It figures,” Hana’s voice came a second later, “It’s a laundromat.”

Kateri raised one hand to block her comm … still on Vox, “Do you want to move and get a better angle or let the boss and Barnes deal with it?”

“If I was runnin’ off to China,” Kenny noted, seemingly as an aside to Hana, “Doin’ my laundry wouldn’t be at the top of my list.”

_Well, of course, but you’re a boy … man … whatever._

_You have a different relationship with clean laundry than we women do_.

Clinton shook his head, “Not right now.” Kateri nodded and went back to scanning the street. He added across comms to Jess, “Maybe we got this girl wrong, bro.”

 _Maybe … the pieces seem to slot together quite well, though_.

 _Doesn’t have to be the only explanation that fits, I guess_.

“We need to talk to her,” Jess answered definitively. _I hate having extended conversation over comms. Hate missing facial cues_. Kateri could ‘read’ voices well, for lack of a better word, but picking up intonations was only half the message sometimes.

Barnes was concerned by that idea and the necessity of breaking cover which doing that would involve. Kateri felt likewise.

“If we do go talk to her, boss,” Kateri added cautiously, “We’ve gotta be sure about it. Can’t unbreak cover. Only one chance …”

_And what if we break cover and then we’re were right about this?_

“It’s just a block away,” noted Hana, the sound of the squeaky springs of her chair in the background, “I’ve got this. Your dirty clothes?”

_Definitely talking to Kenny._

Kateri pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle a giggle. _She’s going to get him back for having to do this_. She pressed it all the harder when the two’s back-and-forth about Kenny’s dirty laundry followed. _Oh, you two!_

Within a minute Hana appeared walking down the street toward the laundromat, Kenny’s duffle full of dirty clothes slung over one shoulder. _This’ll be interesting, I think_. Once Hana entered the building, she disappeared from sight from Clinton and Kateri’s position. The tech analyst had her phone on, however, and patched into comms so everyone watching could hear every word she said inside.

The following few minutes of interaction between Hana and Miss Zheng were a masterful display of improvisation on short-notice in Kateri’s opinion. _Not sure I could do better myself._ The discussion of what laundromat machines were better was casual and normal for the setting. _Me, there’d be a few more complaints_.

“25 minutes of peace and music,” Hana commented after the sounds of coins being fed ceased. _Normal trying to be polite and friendly, chit-chatting with the others stuck doing their laundry_.

After asking about Miss Zheng’s tattoo and confirming that it was a silkworm, Hana began to cough and cough and cough. _Chemical and cleaning smells in laundromats are a big thing. Could cause a real asthmatic a problem_. Miss Zheng’s soft voice was faint in the comms, asking if Hana had asthma and took albuterol. _The medicine we found in the bag._

“Thank you,” Hana’s voice was tight as if the medicine was slowly taking effect but had not totally fixed the problem yet. _Very well done. Very well done indeed_.

Another player entered the picture at that point, another woman with a baby … Cassie’s baby, or so the following conversation indicated. The conversation between Cassie and the other woman went back and forth between English and what was probably Chinese, so Kateri could only understand part, but it was enough to put some very interesting pieces together.

“That kid looks mixed,” Barnes’ voice came over comms, near-astonishment in her tone, “Could be Hayden’s son.”

_Okkkkaaayyyyyy._

_Wasn’t expecting that_.

 _Not only get a mistress, but you also have a kid with that mistress, after your son with your wife dies. Bloody h**l_.

 _Poor Mrs. Hayden! For a lot of reasons_.

“… the son he lost,” Kateri missed the first words of Jess’ statement, the audio from inside overlapping and blurring with the feeds from Barnes and the boss, “Started a whole new family.”

“Who’s a lucky boy? You’re going to get on a big plane to go see Grandma,” the other woman talking with Miss Zheng cooed to the little baby.

The conversation switched back into Chinese, which made about as much sense to everyone but Kenny as Kateri and Clinton’s conversations in Mohawk to the others. _Jess knows a little, not enough to follow when we get going complicated and fast_.

“Kenny?” Jess prompted. _Translation time_.

“She’s saying her and the kid are taking a plane tonight,” Kenny answered, “Friend thinks she’s going to Taiwan.”

 _Reasonable reason for your departure is less attention-grabbing than simply up and disappearing_.

 _Doesn’t get suspicious … until you don’t come back and don’t come back and don’t send word. Until you cut ties_ _with your old life_

There was more chattering in Chinese. “That’s about a baby’s doctor’s appointment day after tomorrow. Friend canceled it, but our girl thinks she might still be here.”

 _Still here? Doesn’t want to go with Hayden after all_.

_What the h**l is going on?_

“Sounds like she might be having second thoughts about running off to China with Hayden,” Barnes noted.

_But why?_

Hana’s voice came back over comms asking about the baby’s name. _Eli_. _Only one year old, and just one at that. Kids are cute at that age_.

“Hey, boss,” Kenny’s voice sounded again a few seconds later, a new thread of almost puzzlement in his voice, puzzlement that Kateri shared as soon as he ran through the intel he’d just been sent, “Taiwan Government confirms that Cassie Zheng’s passport is legit, but they can’t find any employment records for her in Taiwan or any records that she attended school there, not even grammar school. Like she was born the day she got her passport five years ago …”

Kateri frowned. _That’s weird_. _Very weird._ “Kenny, the Taiwanese are sure Zheng’s passport’s legit?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

Kateri’s frowned deepened. “Boss, no employment records, no school records, those are classic signs of a poorly back-stopped new identity …”

_How the h**l did you get into SUNY with no school records either?_

There was a grunt of acknowledgment from Jess and another brief discussion from Hana. Miss Zheng was heading home to feed her son, and Hana had offered to watch her laundry … in thanks for the asthma rescue. Once Miss Zheng had left, Hana switched from her phone back to her comm, lessening the background noise dramatically.

Then there was an interesting discovery. The progesterone found in the backpack yesterday was presumably for Miss Zheng.

The drug was for PMS, but a 300 mg daily dose was … quite high.

Too high for normal circumstances … unless …

Add in the clue of the tattoo … changing forms …

… unless you weren’t born a woman.

 _Well, that changes things_.

_Doubts about going or not make more sense now._

_China doesn’t have much tolerance of … those who are … different_.

* * *

Under the ruse of Hana taking Miss Zheng her laundry, Hana with Barnes and the boss headed inside the apartment complex half-an-hour later, leaving Kateri and Clinton outside to keep an eye on things. The three switched their comms off of vox, but within an hour the boss sent a quick series of texts with an update on the situation.

As believed from the medicine, Miss Zheng was transgender. Her already hinted-at doubts about going with Paul to China stemmed from her fear of the consequences of such a move. The Chinese government claimed that transgender people were mentally ill, and there was the great risk that she could lose custody of her son.

 _Even Paul with his leverage from the names couldn’t protect her and the kid from that_.

Paul was planning to leave that night, but Miss Zheng did not have a meeting point. The appropriate people would call her when the time came to give her some warning and then would come and pick her up and take her to appropriate place.

_To meet Paul and then head to the plane? Or take her straight to the airport?_

Miss Zheng, who had not known originally that Hayden was selling intel to the Chinese, did not know where to go from there now … and had asked for help.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly, and Hana, Barnes, and the boss remained in Miss Zheng’s apartment waiting for the Chinese or for Hayden to make contact. Early in the evening, not long after the sun had set, Hayden contacted his mistress. He confirmed that someone was coming soon to pick her up … and reiterated his promise to take care of her and her son … and give them a good life.

_Being a traitor is not a good way to gain trust._

_Do it once. You can do it again. … Kinda like cheating._

_The Chinese’ll get him out of here. Can’t believe they’ll trust him that much, though_.

About 9pm a dark sedan pulled up in front of Cassie’s apartment building, and she appeared not long after, carrying her son in her arms. The tracking device and the microphone planted in the phone in her bag … not in the one in her purse. _If we’d had more time, it’d be better to not use the phone._ _Everyone knows to check the phone. Oldest trick in the book_ … worked perfectly, and the team could hear quite well what was said between Cassie and the older, Chinese woman in the car, even after Cassie’s phone got tossed out the window.

“You can get a better phone in China,” the older woman said to Cassie.

To the driver, she added, “Across Broads to New Jersey.

The sedan pulled away from the curb, and the two FBI SUVs slowly pulled out to follow, careful to give the sedan enough lead room so that the Chinese did not get suspicious they were being tailed. Kateri still kept an eye on the tablet in her lap and the map with the tracking device highlighted anyway. _Traffic and lights are unpredictable … even at this time of night_. From the light, Barnes was doing the same in the backseat.

“What a healthy boy!” The older woman commented, “Most precious gift a woman can give a man: a son.”

_And that kind of thinking … women are lesser than men … that’s how you get a population problem._

_Too many men and not enough women_.

“Where are we going?” Cassie asked, a thread of nerves in her voice.

“You’ll see,” was the unhelpful response. There was a pause and then a question that gave Kateri a chill. “You have another phone.”

 _Bloody h**l_.

“No,” Cassie replied calmly.

“Give me your bag.” There was the loud rustling of a bag being moved.

_Bloody h**l._

_She’s going to find it!_ Kateri shot a look at her partner, who hit the gas slightly to close the gap between himself and the lead SUV.

“What are you doing?” Came Cassie’s aggrieved voice.

“You’re transmitting,” the older woman replied.

“D**n,” Kenny’s voice came over comms, swearing from the lead SUV with Jess and Hana, “They made her.”

_They found the bug, but do they suspect her?_

_FBI’s after Hayden … could they think we planted the bug as part of surveillance … without her knowing?_

“Knock out their phones. Now!” Jess ordered. A beat later, he added, “Let’s move-in.”

 _Can’t take the chance_.

The flashing lights on Jess’ car went on, and Kateri reached up to flip theirs on, as well, as Clinton hit the gas. _Here we go_. Jess pulled out of the right-hand lane and hit the gas, speeding up beside the Chinese car carrying Cassie and the baby. As the cars reached the bridge, which rattled and echoed with the sound of a train passing by overhead, he swerved back into the right-hand lane, blocking the Chinese car and forcing it to slam on its brakes to keep from crashing. Clinton pulled their SUV in behind the car, blocking off its escape route that way.

_Just the pavement now._

_Most wouldn’t try that_.

The six agents poured from the two SUVs, guns drawn and pointing at the occupants of the car.

“Out of the car,” Kenny bellowed.

Everyone exited without a fight, and the driver and the woman in the back were handcuffed, as Cassie climbed from the car more slowly, Eli in her arms. The problem then became how to find Hayden. The lines of communication he was using were hidden behind encryptions and VPNs, which would not be quick to get through, and he was leaving that night.

 _We’re running out of time_.

The solution just as quickly became evident. The team did not know where Hayden was, but Cassie was helping them, and that meant that they had two things that Hayden highly valued: his family. With the help … _willing or not. Doesn’t want to get sent back to China_ … of Mr. Woo, the driver, a message was sent to Hayden that Eli was sick with pink eye and needed medicine … before they left for China.

Within minutes a reply came back. There was a 24-hour pharmacy in Dayton Road in Jamesburg, New Jersey, an hour south of New York City. Only five miles from that pharmacy was Black Pond Airport, a privately owned airport for general aviation.

 _Got you_.

* * *

A little under an hour later, the two FBI SUVs sped onto the grounds of Black Pond Airport. It was a small airport but well-lit up, and there was a business jet waiting by one of the hangers with several Asian men, who looked like stereotypical bodyguards, standing at the bottom of the steps that led up into the belly of the plane.

 _End of the line, Hayden_.

“I have a federal warrant for the arrest of Paul Hayden,” said Jess, as he approached the men blocking access to the steps, “I believe he’s in that plane.”

“This plane is flagged under the People’s Republic of China,” Dark Suit replied in clear though slightly accented English, “and not subject to searches or seizures.”

The voices drifted over on the clear night air, as Clinton and Kateri closed the distance to Jess’ position, forming up on his left. Kateri cast a quick glance around the scene cataloging everyone’s position as her partner began to speak.

“… says to hold off. Can’t so much as lay a finger on them,” Clinton informed Jess … much too cheerfully … it was all for show.

_We were expecting this wrinkle._

_Like with embassies … we can’t go in._

_So we make Hayden come out_.

Jess glanced back towards where Barnes and Hana were standing by the cars and made a motion, and from the most distant SUV, Cassie Zheng with her baby son, Eli, in her arms appeared. Jess took a step towards the plane, and the Chinese men moved to keep blocking him, and Kenny, Clinton, and Kateri shifted to reform on either side of the boss.

_We’re baiting Hayden to come out._

_What will these goons do to try to stop him???_

“Paul Hayden,” Jess bellowed, “I have someone who wants to talk to you.”

 _Trump card_.

 _Just gotta wait now_.

Cassie knew the role she had to play and did it well. “Paul, sweetheart,” she called, and the quiver of emotion in her voice seemed genuine, “I’m here with Eli. Please, we need to see you. Eli needs to see his father.”

Within only a handful of seconds, Hayden appeared at the top of the steps. “Cassie. Run to me. They won’t stop you.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Jess replied.

Hayden’s face was a mixture of puzzlement and almost disbelief.

“Please, follow me,” Cassie begged, “We’ll never see each other again. You won’t see Eli grow up. He needs you. I need you.”

Kateri glanced around again, cataloging the faces and posture of the Chinese guards and lackeys. _Will they try to stop Hayden … by force if he tries to stay?_

“If I stay, I’ll be imprisoned,” Hayden argued.

“Even with you in prison, we can still be a family,” choked out Cassie.

 _Anything’s better than nothing, I guess_.

There was a long moment of silence, and then one of the dark suits turned back towards the plane. “Forget her,” he ordered Paul in clipped tones, “There are many pretty girls in China.”

 _She’s not just a pretty girl, moron_.

_Not to Hayden._

“This one wasn’t even born a woman,” Dark Suit finished.

_Relevance?_

_And how’d you figure that out anyway?_

“What?” Hayden exclaimed. “What does … What does he mean?” Shock and puzzlement was clear in his face and the tone of his voice.

 _Not how she wanted that to come out_.

_Not how anyone wants to come out._

“I transitioned eight years ago in Taiwan,” Cassie replied, her voice all choked up, “Paul, this is me. The real me. You’ve always known the real me.”

_Still a shock for him._

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hayden asked, his voice somewhere between anger and consternation.

“I … I was afraid. Afraid you’d stop seeing me for who I really am. I’m sorry.” Eli began to sob in her arms as Cassie finished speaking, and she clutched her baby a little more tightly to her chest, rocking him back and forth trying to quiet his sobs.

 _Don’t judge by externals_.

“Cassie’s the same person she was five minutes ago, Paul,” Jess called back, “Same woman you fell in love with. Mother of your child. A woman who gave you something to live for. And you risk everything for her, for your son … your good name, your oath, your liberty, don’t walk away from that. I know that you know, Paul, there’s nothing more precious than watching your child grow up.” The honesty of those statements—of a father speaking to another father—rang clear in Jess’ tone.

Kateri saw Hayden’s face change in an instant as he made his decision. “To h**l with this,” he exclaimed and shoved his way down the stairs—past the suits, who fought vainly to run him down, to catch him—and ran straight toward Cassie. The suits tried to interfere to stop him, but Jess, Kenny, Clinton, and Kateri all formed a wall between the two groups and slowly backed toward the cars.

_It’s over._

_This is American soil now that’s he on._

Agents had caught Hayden, but once he was quickly searched, he was allowed to go to Cassie and his boy and hug them and say goodbye quickly. Then Clinton cuffed him, and Kenny marched him away.

_It’s over._

_No victory without sacrifice._

_Cassie saved a lot of lives today._

_It took courage to make that personal sacrifice_.

 _A lot of courage_.

On the drive back to New York City a little while later, Kateri pulled out her phone and thumbed open her texting app to do what she had been meaning to do since Monday morning. _But keep forgetting or running out of time_. “Hey, Tali. What’s this I hear about a cool new video you haven’t sent me yet?” 

* * *

[1] Customs and Border Protection.


End file.
